SharesPost | Private Company Transactions

In the spirit of cool…I stumbled upon SharesPost – a sort of CraigsList meets ebay for buyers and sellers of private company equity. Talk about creating a new marketplace. Naturally there is a lot of legalese required to complete such a transaction, from investor qualification to transact, to escrow and indemnification agreements and beyond. Now I’m no attorney, nor do I play one in the blogosphere but it does appear, to my naive eye, that SharesPost does yeomen’s work to address all of the requisite issues in and around private placements. In addition to the marketplace platform is some very robust company research that is often challenging to come by, particularly for privately held entities.

Though the SharesPost market is not surprisingly weighted towards technology companies there are some biotechs listed including a few molecular diagnostics companies, Navigenics and XDx, and Greystone Pharmaceuticals. You can see price-per-share offers on both the buy and sell side along with implied valuations for each offering, now that is cool. And the coolness does not stop there – research analyst opinions provide estimated target prices too. I would be a bit careful here however with these reports and valuations, though they do contain relationship disclosures there are often mountains of material facts that are not accessible.

But hey…if someday you may think, geez…I sure wish I could have bought some shares of Facebook or LinkedIn before they went public, well...now you can – and it will cost you $14.75 and $11.25 per share respectively.

All material contained herein is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities.