The Stale-Mark Reckoning

For years, a private valuation could sit on paper without ever being tested. A company raised at a high price, the number became the headline, and nobody had to find out whether a buyer would pay it.

That’s changing. The Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor names “the market risk of staying private too long” as one of its themes, and the evidence is hard to miss. Let’s look at what the data shows, read two high-profile deals carefully, and work out what it means for founders setting a price and GPs marking a portfolio.

What a Private Mark Really Is

A private mark is the price set in a company’s last funding round. It reflects what a small group of investors agreed to pay, often with preferred-stock terms attached, at one moment in time. It isn’t a market price, and it can’t be cashed until someone buys the shares.

When those shares do meet buyers, the difference shows. Per Forge data cited in the Q3 2026 Monitor:

  • Shares in companies that last raised in 2023 trade at a median 45% discount on the secondary market.
  • Shares in companies that last raised in 2021 trade at a median 59% discount.

The older the mark, the bigger the gap. PitchBook’s summary: “valuation compression remains the dominant theme among exits.”

The Exit Picture in the Q3 2026 Monitor

The same report shows why so many marks haven’t been tested yet:

  • 179 companies have become unicorns in 2026, “more… than have completed an IPO in any year except 2021.”
  • The backlog of companies that “need to, or should have, gone public in the past few years is more than two full years of IPOs.”
  • Only 18 companies went public in Q3, and 12 of them were healthcare-related.
  • “Despite SpaceX’s record-breaking $1.7 trillion listing in Q2, the IPO window has not reopened.”

To be clear, companies are still going public. IPO counts through Q3 have passed each of the last three full years. PitchBook’s word for the market is stasis. And listing isn’t an automatic win: the median company in PitchBook’s VC-Backed IPO Index trailed the Morningstar Growth Index by 15.1% in its first 30 days and 38.2% by day 120 (data as of August 18). That’s performance relative to a growth index, not an absolute loss, but it shows public investors are pricing carefully too.

So where is liquidity coming from? Mostly acquisitions. Acquisition value hit a decade high of $465.3 billion in 2026, and PitchBook says “M&A has become the preferred, or at least primary, route for liquidity.” One caveat: a few giant deals drive much of that total. Without the SpaceX–Cursor deal, Q3 exits totaled $53 billion, “the lowest quarter since Q4 2024.”

Two Sales, Read Carefully

PitchBook says Miro and Airtable, “once valued at $17.5 billion and $11.7 billion, respectively, were acquired or agreed to be acquired by Bending Spoons at discounts of nearly 90% to their private marks.” Here’s what that means.

Airtable

Bending Spoons announced its Airtable deal on August 4 at a $1.285 billion enterprise value, or about $2.25 billion in equity value once Airtable’s large net cash balance is included. It closed on September 4. Airtable says it serves 500,000+ organizations. Co-founder Howie Liu said he’s “proud of what the Airtable team has built and excited to see the business enter this next chapter.”

Miro

On September 10, Miro agreed to be acquired by Bending Spoons in an all-cash deal at a $1.355 billion enterprise value, about $1.79 billion in equity value including Miro’s net cash. Some Miro shareholders agreed to put $295 million of their proceeds into new Bending Spoons shares. Closing is expected in Q4 2026. Founder and CEO Andrey Khusid published a note explaining equity value (“what flows to shareholders”) versus enterprise value.

Reading the numbers correctly

“Nearly 90%” compares enterprise value with the peak private mark. Equity value is higher because of the net cash each company held. In Airtable’s case, that gap was mostly cash raised at peak prices. What each investor actually received depends on their share class and terms. So it’s accurate to say these companies sold nearly 90% below their marks. It isn’t accurate to say investors lost 90%.

And neither story is about a bad business. Both are large, successful companies. The point is that a price set in a hot market still has to be earned later.

What Founders Should Do

  1. Raise at a price you can grow into. Your valuation becomes the bar for your next round and your exit.
  2. Plan your exit path early. With M&A as the primary route, know the corporate development teams, strategic investors and likely acquirers in your space from the seed round on.
  3. Talk with your backers about marks. Investors holding stale marks may hesitate on follow-ons or push for bridges. Have the conversation before you need the money.
  4. Model, test, adjust. Revisit your exit assumptions every year as the market moves.

What GPs Should Do

  1. Mark conservatively and show your work. When famous unicorns sell far below their marks, LPs look harder at paper gains.
  2. Remember that entry price drives returns. Today’s seed rounds become the next decade’s marks.
  3. Map buyers as well as founders. Acquirers and secondary buyers belong in your network, too.

Your Exit Is a Relationship, Not a Market Event

Miro’s and Airtable’s outcomes were negotiated with one buyer, not set by a public market. That’s how most exits happen today. Value gets realized through people: a strategic buyer who already knows the team, a secondary buyer introduced by a trusted co-investor, an investor who’ll lead a fairly priced round because someone vouched for the founder.

Much of that network is public. Form D filings list a company’s related persons and investors, Form ADV shows advisers and their funds, and business registries show shared boards. ConnectLab.live maps those paths alongside your own contacts, so you can see who already knows the acquirers and investors that matter for your exit.

Connection is the currency of the 21st Century. Start mapping your exit at seed.

What would your next valuation look like if you priced it for the buyer you’ll eventually meet, rather than the round you’re raising now?

If you’d like help with that, here’s an open invitation:

About Ken McArthur

Ken McArthur is the founder of ConnectLab.live, an AI relationship-intelligence and warm-intro platform that helps founders who are raising find the funds that fit and the people who can introduce them, and helps fund managers connect with the founders they back. He was recently accepted into Harvard Business School Foundry. He also writes Raise Smarter, a daily newsletter on what's really moving in early-stage fundraising. Ken challenges us to realize we ALL have an impact, whether we want to or not, on thousands of people we touch in our day-to-day lives, and he shows that simple things make a HUGE difference. ConnectLab.live grew out of that belief. Connection is the currency of the 21st Century, and the right introduction can change a company's future. Long before ConnectLab, Ken was the popular host of live events that brought together top-level marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, corporations and non-profit organizations to build multi-million dollar joint venture relationships. He has managed product launches ranked in the top 400 sites on the Internet and is regularly asked to speak at leading marketing events. He created AffiliateShowcase.com, a pioneering affiliate program search engine and directory. He also founded the MBS Internet Research Center, which conducted the world's largest survey ever attempted on creating and launching successful information products. Ken was the official mentor for Sterling Valentine as he took his launch from zero to over $100,000 in less than 8 days, a proof of concept documented in Info Product Blueprint. Today he puts that same skill for connecting people and launching ideas to work for founders and the investors who back them.

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