👉 Background: Rokt was founded in Australia back in 2012 with the goal to “optimise online shopping transactions”. It presents customers with products or services from other brands after the purchase. For example, you buy Aussie Open tickets and once the transaction has finalised, Ticketmaster will show you discounts from other brands. That's powered by Rokt.

👉 What happened: Over the past few years, Rokt has grown rapidly. In fact, it saw its revenue jump by more than 40% last year to $600 million USD, and has grown to more than 15 countries. Now, Rokt has raised $335 million USD in what it hopes to be its last private capital raise.

👉 What else: Interestingly, Rokt’s CEO claims they didn’t need to raise money - but they did it to give investors and employees liquidity before a (hoped) IPO in 2026.

What's the key learning?

💡A secondary capital raise isn’t about new funding—it’s about giving employees and investors a chance to cash in on their juicy shares.

💡In private companies, employees and early investors might have valuable shares but there is no way to turn them into cash. This means that employees and investors aren't able to realise their paper-gains. A secondary raise solves this by allowing investors and employees to sell their shares to new investors - which gives them another way to make their shares liquid.

💡On top of this, it alllows the company to revise their market valuation. We've seen this with other private tech companies like Canva, which helped facilitate a $1.6 billion USD secondary share sale, and Stripe who did a $1 billion USD secondary share sale too.