ROUND Z RESEARCH · OPEN ACCESS · CC BY 4.0
PRE-IPO MARKETS · METHODOLOGY · QUARTERLY
The research desk.
Round Z's institutional research output. Position papers documenting the case for retail access to pre-IPO markets. Methodology publishing how we evaluate every deal. Quarterly briefs on private secondary volume and pricing. Open access, cited freely, designed to be adopted.
Published by the Round Z Capital Desk · Edited by the editorial collective · support@roundzventures.com
Featured · Vol I
The Private Markets Thesis.
The flagship position paper. The case for retail access to pre-IPO investing — why the next $500B of venture value capture belongs not to LPs of $5B funds, but to a marketplace where someone can invest $1 in the same deal as a sovereign wealth fund. Three structural forces. Three product styles. One thesis.
Volume I · June 2026 · 6 pages · CC BY 4.0
Inside this volume
01Executive summary
02The structural argument
03The three product styles
04Risk + responsibility
05The forward agenda
Published catalog
The desk's work.
Volume I establishes the thesis. Volume II publishes our methodology in full. The Quarterly delivers our published view of the private markets every three months. All open access.
Vol IIJun 2026
The Methodology.
How every deal gets evaluated. The diligence checklist (8 items, no exceptions), the scoring framework (5 weighted dimensions, 0–100 composite), and the routing logic between Omakase, Okonomi, and FOMO Fund.
The headline number
Approximately 6.2% of deals sourced end up live on the platform. The other 93.8% are rejected for failing the diligence checklist, scoring below 65, or being held in the edge-case bucket. The rejection rate is the methodology.
QuarterlyQ2 2026
State of pre-IPO markets.
The desk's published view of the private secondary markets. Volume, pricing, sector rotation, and the deals that defined the quarter. Published every three months. Q2 2026 issue live now.
The headline number
Pre-IPO secondary volume hit $8.4B in Q2 2026, up 24% QoQ and 71% YoY. AI & infrastructure absorbed 43% of volume. Climate is the only sector trading above last-round pricing. Consumer/DTC continues its multi-quarter correction.
Open access
Research, adopted.
Every paper in the Round Z Research catalog publishes under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The framework is meant to be adopted, critiqued, and operationalized by other platforms, advisors, and educators.
Round Z exists because retail investors deserve honest access to a market that was previously locked. The research desk exists because they also deserve honest education about it.
For citation correspondence, replication studies, or to contribute to a future volume: support@roundzventures.com
Research · Position · Methodology · roundzventures.com/research
How to cite Vol I: Round Z Research. (2026). The Private Markets Thesis, Volume I. Round Z Ventures. roundzventures.com/research
Disclaimer. Nothing on this page or in the publications linked from it constitutes investment, legal, accounting, or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. The Round Z research catalog is educational. Round Z Ventures is a private securities marketplace; investing in private securities is speculative and involves a high degree of risk. Past performance does not predict future results. Investors may lose all or a substantial portion of their investment. Investments are illiquid and not redeemable on demand. Numbers cited in the Quarterly Brief are estimates from third-party data providers with documented methodology; treat as directional.