Secondaries Explained

Funds & buyers · Dedicated secondaries specialist

W Capital Partners

HeadquartersNew York, USA
Founded2001
OwnershipIndependent
StrategyDirect secondaries — single-company minority positions, not fund stakes
Scale~$2B in regulatory assets under management

Founded in 2001 by David Wachter, Stephen Wertheimer, and Bob Migliorino, W Capital Partners pioneered a narrower niche within secondaries: direct secondaries, meaning purchases of a minority stake in a single private company, rather than an LP's interest in a fund holding many companies.

Its buyers are typically corporations, financial institutions, VC and PE firms, or founders who hold a private-company stake and want partial liquidity without a full sale — structured either as a direct share purchase or, increasingly, as a GP-led continuation vehicle built around one or a few specific assets.

W Capital has completed more than 70 portfolio transactions across over 100 private-equity-backed companies since inception, building one of the longer track records among managers focused exclusively on the direct (as opposed to fund-stake) side of the secondary market.

Worth knowing

One of the few managers whose whole strategy is direct company stakes rather than fund interests.

See the full buyer directory, or read the glossaryfor the terms (LP-led, GP-led, continuation fund) that describe how firms like this actually transact.