Funds & buyers · Dedicated secondaries specialist
W Capital Partners
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.
What a transaction here looks like
W Capital sits in a different part of the market from most of this directory: it buys direct minority positions in individual companies rather than stakes in funds. That means negotiating with the company and with existing shareholders, understanding one business rather than a diversified pool, and living with the governance reality of being a minority holder in a private company.
Who sits on the other side
Sellers are typically early investors, corporate venture arms or funds at the end of their life that hold a position in a company which has not yet exited. For a reader, this is the closest institutional analogue to what an employee or angel faces — the difference is that a direct secondaries firm has the leverage and legal support to negotiate transfer restrictions that an individual usually does not.
Where this sits in the market
Independent firms whose entire business is buying LP fund stakes, GP-led continuation vehicles, or direct company positions — secondaries is not a side strategy, it is the strategy.
This site groups buyers into four categories, because the category tells you more about how a firm behaves than its size does. See the rest of thededicated secondaries specialistgroup in the directory.
Frequently asked
How is a direct secondary different from an LP secondary?
A direct secondary transfers shares in one operating company. An LP secondary transfers a stake in a fund that holds many companies. The diligence, the risk profile and the counterparties are all different, even though both are called secondaries.
Why would a company allow a direct secondary sale?
Because it can solve a problem for the company: giving long-serving shareholders liquidity without an IPO, replacing a passive or distressed holder with a committed one, or cleaning up a cap table before a new round. The company almost always controls whether the transfer is permitted.
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.