In June 2020, Addepar launched Marketplace, a digital platform that supplements our reporting capabilities by helping clients access and navigate investment opportunities in private markets. Marketplace is powered by Acervus Securities, our wholly-owned broker-dealer subsidiary, and a dedicated in-house team of investment professionals leveraging Addepar’s reach and scale to uncover investment opportunities and best-in-class solutions for its clients.

It’s been rewarding to see our clients’ enthusiasm for the application and our vision for where it’s headed. In this blog post, I’ll share some background on how Marketplace fits into Addepar’s broader mission, outline current offerings and functionality, and offer a glimpse of where we plan on taking it in the future.

Marketplace and Addepar's Mission to Empower Investors

Addepar was founded during 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis. Since then, our focus has been using technology to empower better financial decision making. It was immediately clear that  managers of complex portfolios lacked a sophisticated way to aggregate all their investments into one place and easily report results to stakeholders. Addepar has spent the past fourteen years obsessively focused on this problem, and has created what we believe is the industry’s best portfolio reporting platform as a result.

Marketplace is a new phase in fulfilling our mission. It was purpose-built to facilitate investment analysis and execution in a unified and convenient way. The platform enables us to connect Addepar’s intuitive “rear-view mirror” analysis and reporting features with powerful “windshield and headlights” capabilities that clients are using to consider and act upon a range of investment opportunities. These capabilities are all built on Addepar’s core data platform and calculation engines. 

A Digital and Integrated Marketplace

Marketplace allows our clients to view and evaluate investment opportunities and to digitally initiate transactions. There is no additional fee for an Addepar client to access Marketplace.

It provides clients with a centralized place to access a broad range of financial products that complement our clients’ investment programs. Our team, coupled with Addepar's reach and insights, has enabled us to curate Marketplace products and partners to cover investment opportunities and liquidity solutions our clients most often seek: 

  • Direct access to private fund managers consistent with the caliber of our clients 

  • Investments and secondary transactions in VC-backed private companies

  • Liquidity solutions for LP fund interests and private investments

  • Cash deposit programs

  • Digital asset custody and execution

We have focused in these product areas based on consistent feedback from our clients that efficiently accessing the most compelling opportunities in these segments is a constant challenge. We’ve already found success in helping clients overcome those challenges. With representation from nearly 40% of Addepar’s client base to date, Marketplace has facilitated approx half a billion dollars in transactional volume. As we scale we will continue to rely on client feedback to guide our expansion into additional product categories.

Our Longer-Term Vision

While we’re excited about the current functionality and investment offerings, our vision for Marketplace goes far beyond its current state. We will strive to provide our clients with broader access to complimentary financial products as well as order management system (“OMS”) style functionality across all alternatives product types. This will ultimately enable our clients to source, diligence, and execute transactions in a more efficient and digital way. We are currently expanding the capabilities and functionality of Addepar’s reporting for direct company investments via proprietary, actionable secondary pricing from the Marketplace desk and third-party data providers. Given the size of the Addepar network, and the caliber of investors it includes, we see tremendous potential in facilitating connections and community among our clients. For clients who are interested, we want to help them share intelligence, transact with one another, or co-invest together.

More broadly, we envision a future where asset allocation and security selection, proposal generation, portfolio construction and execution, and reporting can all occur in a frictionless way within the Addepar ecosystem, with Marketplace seamlessly integrated into that overall workflow.

We’re excited to be a part of this next phase of Addepar’s evolution. For those interested in learning more, please contact your Account Manager, or reach out to us directly at info@acervussecurities.com.

Brokerage services provided by Acervus Securities, an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC, an Addepar company. Acervus Securities, Inc. is not acting as a municipal advisor and the opinions or views contained herein are not intended to be, and do not constitute, advice within the meaning of Section 975 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This article, and any attachments, is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any security or other product. The information provided is subject to change without notice.

This article was originally published June 29, 2020, and updated on August 30, 2023.