15 EQUITY

Co-founders Sohail Prasad and Samir Kaji lead the firm's investment sourcing and platform strategy. Prasad's background includes engineering roles and prior fintech ventures; Kaji spent over a decade as a venture banker at First Republic Bank before co-founding the firm. The investment committee structure and any additional named decision-makers are not publicly detailed.

The firm purchases shares on the secondary market from early employees, former founders, and early-stage institutional investors seeking liquidity before a company goes public. 15 EQUITY aggregates demand from its platform of accredited investors, negotiates block purchases where possible, and allocates shares into company-specific special purpose vehicles. Sourcing is opportunistic — availability depends on secondary-market supply rather than a predetermined investment calendar.

15 EQUITY operates as both a registered investment adviser and a broker-dealer. It is not a blind-pool venture fund. Each investment opportunity is offered through a company-specific vehicle; investors select exactly which company they want exposure to. This structure differs from feeder funds that commingle multiple positions and from brokerages that simply execute trades — 15 EQUITY acts as a principal in sourcing, structuring, and administering each vehicle.

The firm's disclosed activity focuses entirely on secondary transactions — purchasing existing shares from stockholders rather than investing in primary capital raises. This means 15 EQUITY does not provide new capital to the underlying companies. The firm has not publicly indicated participation in primary rounds, though it could theoretically do so through the same vehicle structure.

15 EQUITY targets late-stage venture-backed companies — specifically those valued above roughly $500 million that have raised multiple institutional rounds and show a discernible path toward a liquidity event. The firm does not invest in seed-stage or early-stage startups. Portfolio examples include SpaceX, Stripe, and Databricks, all of which had raised significant institutional capital and achieved multi-billion-dollar valuations before appearing on the platform.

The structural differentiator is the company-specific vehicle model. Most competitors use feeder funds that bundle multiple positions into a single vehicle with manager discretion over composition. 15 EQUITY's approach lets investors target a single name — similar to buying a single stock rather than a mutual fund. This also means investors bear full concentration risk to that one company rather than diversifying across a pre-packaged basket.

The firm's brand anchor is the $15,000 minimum investment, significantly lower than traditional private-market fund minimums that often start at $250,000 or more. Investors must qualify as accredited under SEC rules. The firm has not publicly disclosed whether it accepts qualified purchasers or qualified clients, which carry higher asset thresholds, for any subset of offerings.