Lessin: Venture capital has shifted toward bespoke private trading markets
Sam Lessin · The Truth About AI: Sam Lessin’s Contrarian Take · Joe Lonsdale · May 17, 2025 · at 20:51
Sam Lessin (General Partner at Slow Ventures) outlines his thesis on how private secondary markets and PE are replacing the standard venture-to-IPO pipeline.
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“So what I think has happened now is that basically it isn't that there is innovation. It isn't that there's stuff going on, but because the factory line shut down, the whole thing has become way more bespoke, right? Where, and what I mean by that is there is a public market. Some companies can get there. There is increasingly a very robust private market of companies that may never go public, right? But that private equity firms and VCs will trade amongst themselves and they have, they're valuable. They're just valuable in a different way in a different market.”
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