{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"NC Tweener Talks","title":"Will Duckett, Co-Founder & COO of Equity Shift: Opening Up How Private Company Ownership and Markets Operate.","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3097,"description":"Will Duckett, co-founder and COO of Equity Shift, joins me to talk about building the infrastructure behind secondary liquidity in private markets. The conversation covers Will's path from a hedge fund back office in New York to co-founding a regulated broker-dealer in Raleigh, what it actually takes to get licensed with FINRA and the SEC, and why Equity Shift describes its platform as a digital operating system for private companies rather than just cap table software.\nWill and I dig into the mechanics that most founders never see up close: tender offers, the daisy-chained SPV structures that made SpaceX famous for not knowing all of its own shareholders, and how Equity Shift built a system meant to prevent that. We also trace the company's growth from small business customers up into some of the largest private equity firms in the world, and the underlying blockchain patent portfolio that powers it all.\nWill offers a candid look at what it's like building a capital-intensive fintech company in North Carolina, plus hard-won founder lessons from seven years and two economic shocks: expect everything to take twice as long as planned, and don't underestimate the value of a strong co-founder.\nTimestamps\n00:00 Cold open & sponsors\n01:36 Welcome & meet Will Duckett of Equity Shift\n02:16 From Chapel Hill (and ancient Roman history) to Wall Street\n02:40 Hedge fund back office to a Columbia MBA\n03:06 Moving home and meeting co-founder Tom at a blockchain meetup\n04:41 Why a blockchain meetup, in 2018\n07:21 Founding Equity Shift with Tom Gordon\n08:24 First customer and becoming a broker-dealer\n09:53 Secondaries 101: SpaceX, Pendo, and tender offers\n10:41 What Equity Shift actually does\n13:17 The SpaceX SPV daisy-chain problem\n14:45 How Equity Shift compares to Carta\n16:19 Life as a regulated FINRA broker-dealer\n18:14 The taxi medallion analogy\n19:07 Splitting CEO/COO responsibilities\n22:39 Fundraising milestones and the NC Tweener Fund seed round\n25:07 Climbing from...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/UEzoK7N1siD9YRaSVBWfZ8B3suSS2aonEIZ5NwBH1Gs/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80NjBh/YWVhZTA4ZTUyY2Fl/MDdhNzQwZWFhNDI4/MDc3Zi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}