NewView and Carta Link Platforms to Simplify Early Share Sales for Startup Staff

NewView and Carta announced a partnership on October 23 to streamline the process for startup employees to sell shares before a company goes public. The collaboration combines NewView's experience in structuring secondary deals with Carta's equity management platform. The goal is to make it easier for companies to launch liquidity programs and for workers to access cash from their stock holdings.

The central mechanism for these transactions is the tender offer. In this structure, employees and early investors sell a portion of their shares to an approved buyer at a set price. As the wait for an initial public offering or acquisition lengthens, more late-stage companies are adopting this method to provide employees with access to their equity compensation.

Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, stated that the partnership is designed to help CEOs manage tenders more smoothly. He described early liquidity as a win-win situation for employees, companies, and investors. Viswanathan noted that the standard recruiting pitch of reaching unicorn status has lost some of its force because the number of billion-dollar companies has increased. He said a tender offer allows companies to tell candidates they will also get liquidity during their time with the firm.

Data from a recent study by NewView Capital and Carta indicates that the practice is expanding. The study projects that tender offers among Series C and later-stage startups have grown threefold over the past three years. However, the practice is not yet universal. Only 44 tender offers were executed in the first half of 2026. Viswanathan wants to widen the group of companies participating in these transactions, calling them strong retention tools and morale boosters.

NewView cited Hightouch, a marketing customization startup, as an example of a company using this approach. NewView led a tender offer for Hightouch last year at a $1.3 billion valuation when the company was seven years old. Other recent companies to hold tender offers include Decagon, an AI customer support startup, and Wayve, a self-driving technology developer. ElevenLabs, an AI voice generator, carried out two such offerings in under a year.

Viswanathan said that companies are staying private for 12 to 15 years and that this timeline is not changing. He argued that private companies need to ensure liquidity for employees to prevent a talent drain to public counterparts. The partnership aims to make this process less complex for both the companies and the workers involved.