Founded in 2000, Saints is a pioneer in the venture secondary market, with a unique focus on GP-led transactions. Saints has executed over 35 portfolio transactions in its history, acquiring over $3 billion of assets. Saints prides itself on taking a partner-first mentality in structuring transactions to align interests for GPs, LPs and early investors alike.
Saints is an investment firm dedicated to providing liquidity to investors in private companies. Saints formed its first fund in 2000, and was a pioneer as a direct secondary fund. Since 2000, Saints has provided liquidity to General Partners and their Limited Partners in Venture Capital and Private Equity funds, to founders and early employees of venture-capital backed companies, and to financial institutions (banks, hedge funds and corporations) who have portfolios of private investments that they have wanted to sell. Saints prides itself on being honest with sellers about pricing and ability to close as well as being flexible in structuring a transaction to meet the needs of a seller - our deals are often structured and can include loans, deferred payments and upside sharing.
The Venture Secondary Market
Over the past decade, the secondary market has grown exponentially from a nascent, opportunistic one when Saints began investing in 2000 to a large, institutionalized asset class today.
The venture secondary market is experiencing tremendous growth currently due to a number of structural challenges in the venture industry, including:
Historic illiquidity for venture-backed companies and for venture funds that has starved limited partners of distributions
Massive buildup of NAV in older funds as a result of increased limited partner commitments into the asset class and increased fund sizes over the past decade
Emergence of GP-led transactions, popularized in the buyout secondary market, which is now being copied by VC-focused secondary firms
Proliferation of single asset secondaries in top VC-backed names is driving other private companies and VC firms to embrace liquidity from institutional secondary firms
Recent success of venture-focused secondary firms in attracting more capital
In addition to these factors, the venture market has seen a mindset shift by venture capital GPs to embrace secondary transactions with financial buyers. It is no longer frowned upon for early investors and founders to seek interim liquidity, and many sophisticated GPs are leveraging secondaries as a critical tool in managing exit liquidity and timing for their own limited partners.