Overview
PrivateTechShares is a resource hub for founders, employees and early angels holding shares or vested options in private companies, covering both the US and Europe. The site is built around one practical job: working out what startup equity is realistically worth today, what it costs to turn options into real shares, and how a small secondary sale gets done without a broker in the middle.
Key Features
- Free equity estimator. Prices a stake off the company's last round, then adjusts for common versus preferred shares and for how liquid the company is. It returns a realistic range rather than a single number, and spells out the gap between the headline valuation and what a private buyer would actually pay.
- Stock option exercise calculator. Add vested options, the strike price and the last-round price to see the cost to exercise, the paper gain before tax and a rough country tax note. A separate US version folds in AMT and ordinary income.
- Equity Toolkit. The paid product is an eight-phase A to Z deal map with explicit STOP points where a lawyer, tax adviser or notary takes over. The US edition costs $39, Europe is EUR 39, and both together are EUR 59. Each ships a PDF guide, a live Excel calculator with a Deal Room control panel, an editable Word workbook and eleven ready-to-send messages.
- Equity Position Report. At $129, or $249 with expert human review, it runs the whole picture on a real grant: a one-page position summary, worth scenarios before and after tax, exercise cost, dilution, an exit waterfall after investor preferences, tax by country and a conversation pack of questions.
- Company and country coverage. Written guides for more than 250 private companies, from OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX to Revolut, Monzo, Helsing, Celonis and Vinted, plus tax guides for eight countries and a yearly Private Tech Equity Report.
- Readiness tools. A four-question "can I sell my shares?" checker, an Equity Navigator that routes people to the right guide in four questions, and an employee exit waterfall calculator.
Use Cases
A departing employee with vested options and roughly 90 days left to exercise is the clearest fit. They need the strike cost, the tax exposure and confirmation that their shares are actually transferable before deciding anything, and the free calculators plus the leaver guides cover that ground first.
A founder or early angel holding a stake too small for institutional platforms is the other. The site is candid that Forge, EquityZen and Nasdaq Private Market chase large, late-stage deals, so a position of EUR 30k to EUR 100k needs its own route: understand the discount, clear the right of first refusal, then approach an existing shareholder or an incoming investor.
The value proposition is preparation rather than brokerage. PrivateTechShares never holds shares or takes a cut of a transaction, which keeps the incentives unusually simple.
