NewView and Carta Integrate Platforms to Streamline Startup Employee Stock Sales

Employees at private startups who hold significant portions of their compensation in equity now have a more direct route to cashing out their shares. This change addresses a growing challenge for workers at companies that remain unlisted for extended periods. Previously, these employees often had limited options for liquidity until a major exit event, such as an acquisition or initial public offering, occurred.

The core of this new approach involves tender offers, transactions that allow staff and early investors to sell a specific portion of their holdings to approved buyers at a fixed price. This mechanism is becoming increasingly common as the wait for traditional exits lengthens. Late-stage companies are turning to these programs to provide interim liquidity, recognizing that the gap between investment rounds and final exits is widening.

NewView and Carta have combined their respective strengths to facilitate these transactions. NewView brings expertise in structuring secondary deals, while Carta offers a comprehensive equity management platform. Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, described the collaboration as a method to help startups launch and manage liquidity programs with greater efficiency. He stated that the partnership is designed to make it easier for CEOs to consider implementing tenders, framing early liquidity as a beneficial outcome for employees, companies, and investors alike.

Recent data from a joint study by NewView Capital and Carta indicates that this practice is expanding rapidly. The research projects that tender offers among Series C and later-stage startups have tripled over the past three years. Viswanathan noted that companies utilizing these offers are no longer restricted to the highest valued private firms, such as OpenAI, Databricks, or Anduril. This shift suggests a broader adoption of liquidity events across the venture-backed ecosystem.

Hightouch, a marketing customization startup, serves as a notable example of this trend. Last year, NewView led a tender offer for the company at a valuation of $1.3 billion, when the firm was seven years old. This instance illustrates how mid-sized, established private companies are now leveraging these mechanisms to provide value to their workforce before a potential public listing.

Despite the growth, tender offers remain a relatively rare occurrence in the broader startup landscape. The same research found that only 44 such offers were executed in the first half of 2026, representing a small fraction of eligible companies. Viswanathan aims to widen this group, arguing that these offers function as strong retention tools and significant morale boosters for teams working in long-duration private ventures.

The traditional recruiting pitch of promising a path to unicorn status has lost some of its persuasive power. Viswanathan observed that a decade ago, reaching billion-dollar valuation was sufficient to attract talent, but the proliferation of such companies has diluted the value of the label. In his view, a tender offer provides a concrete opportunity for companies to tell employees that they will also receive liquidity during their tenure.

Recent examples of companies holding tender offers include Decagon, an AI customer support startup; Wayve, a developer of self-driving technology; and ElevenLabs, an AI voice generator that conducted two such offerings in less than a year. Viswanathan expressed his belief that the trend of companies staying private for 12 to 15 years is unlikely to reverse. He emphasized the need to ensure liquidity for employees to prevent a talent drain from high-quality venture-backed firms to their public counterparts.