Secondary Market Investment Firm Manhattan Venture Partners Appoints Andrea Walne as Partner, Opens San Francisco Regional Office

New York, NY, June 26, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Manhattan Venture Partners ("MVP"), a research-driven merchant bank focused on the secondary market for late-stage, pre-IPO companies, has appointed Andrea Lamari Walne as partner. She will lead the San Francisco regional office and grow the firm's West Coast presence. Working directly with more than 100 late-stage private companies, Walne has facilitated over $10 billion worth of transactions for mid and late-stage private companies. 

MVP's appointment of Walne, and the opening of its new regional office, fortifies its position as the secondary market leader through its service-oriented, research-backed approach of doing business. This "secondary as a service (™)" approach is being widely embraced by technology companies, venture capitalists, and startup employees looking to monetize their existing holdings through secondary sales. MVP has worked with buyers, sellers, and investors of numerous leading technology companies, including Spotify, DocuSign, Pinterest, and Lyft.

As one of the first female executives in the space, Walne has been leading private company liquidity in the secondary market since its early days, beginning her career as a co-founder of Forge (previously Equidate). Prior to joining MVP, she led the Liquidity Solutions team at Carta (previously eShares). Before Carta, she spent three years as the West Coast director for NASDAQ Private Market. a division of Nasdaq, Inc., where she ran business development for this unit, bolstering Nasdaq's's presence by supporting late-stage, pre-IPO companies before they listed on the exchange. She has facilitated transactions for companies such as Slack, Uber, Stitch Fix, and PagerDuty.

"Andrea is a valuable and respected addition to our team. Her success in facilitating more than $10 billion in secondary market transactions is unprecedented. This, combined with her experience as a startup operator and her knowledge of the investment side, makes her exceptionally qualified to lead our West Coast operations," said Jared Carmel, Managing Partner of MVP. 

"Coming into this position I feel fortunate to carry the perspective of someone who's seen all sides of the triangle - from being a founder of one of the secondary liquidity online platforms, a shareholder of a late-stage startup, and now in the role as a VC," said Walne. "MVP was an easy choice - they're the firm that carries the best reputation in the space and service is at the heart of all they do for clients. We are of likemind in taking all players in this process into consideration, and institutionalizing versus democratizing a very personal and important life event for those that have worked so hard."

MVP's Unique Approach: Service-focused, Research-backed
MVP manages all aspects of the transaction by managing communication with the buyer, seller, counsel and the company, therefore facilitating an efficient, transparent, issuer-friendly and U.S. regulatory compliant transaction. The partners involvement in tech investments have helped produce over $2 billion in invested capital across 30+ businesses with greater than 20 liquidity events in the form of an IPO or M&A event.

MVP differentiates itself through its unique research and ability to streamline the transaction process by providing a one-stop principal investing and advisory solution to private companies and their various shareholders, as well as GPs and LPs. The firm accomplishes this by bringing together the full expertise of both their private equity and investment banking platforms in partnership with their research team. MVP maintains an extensive global network of family office, hedge fund, private equity, sovereign and private banking investors seeking access to this asset class.

MVP's research arm, Manhattan Venture Research ("MVR"), is led by Santosh Rao, who was the first analyst to produce research on private technology companies. MVR provides insight for investors in the form of unbiased and cutting-edge private company reports that help alleviate the opacity and informational asymmetry inherent to the venture capital asset class. The team typically publishes at least four company-specific reports and two macro reports per year. Historical reports include Postmates, Slack, Uber, Palantir, and Airbnb. MVR also publishes Venture Bytes, a monthly newsletter, which includes its proprietary Liquidity Watchlist projecting the 25 companies most likely to go public.

About Manhattan Venture Partners
Founded in 2014, Manhattan Ventures Partners has been integral in the institutionalization of the secondary market for late-stage, venture-backed companies. The firm's partners are pioneers in the space and have collectively engaged in more than $2 billion in private transactions, including primary and secondary venture investments.

Through the MVP All-Star Fund, MVP Opportunity Fund and VNTR Securities, the firm identifies opportunities and target companies that are well capitalized by top VCs, have rapid growth rates, and that it believes have mitigated risk based on the underlying business, technology, and ability to execute a defined strategy. For more info visit www.mvp.vc , follow on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, email info@mvp.vc or call 212.858.9900. 

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Carmella Lyman 
Lyman Agency
carm@lymanagency.com