Will Duckett, Co-Founder & COO of Equity Shift: Opening Up How Private Company Ownership and Markets Operate.

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.

Will 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.

Will 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.

Timestamps

00:00 Cold open & sponsors

01:36 Welcome & meet Will Duckett of Equity Shift

02:16 From Chapel Hill (and ancient Roman history) to Wall Street

02:40 Hedge fund back office to a Columbia MBA

03:06 Moving home and meeting co-founder Tom at a blockchain meetup

04:41 Why a blockchain meetup, in 2018

07:21 Founding Equity Shift with Tom Gordon

08:24 First customer and becoming a broker-dealer