Company Profile · Fintech
Nth Round.
The un-glamorous, deeply necessary fintech quietly building the plumbing that lets private companies value, vote, and trade their own shares - no stock exchange required.
The un-glamorous, deeply necessary fintech quietly building the plumbing that lets private companies value, vote, and trade their own shares - no stock exchange required.
Here is a fact that sounds boring and is actually enormous: the vast majority of companies in America are private, and their owners hold equity that is, in a practical sense, stuck. You cannot easily look up what it's worth. You cannot vote your shares from your phone. And you certainly cannot sell a few of them on a Tuesday afternoon to pay for a kitchen renovation. Public-company shareholders take all of this for granted. Private-company shareholders - which is to say most shareholders - live with spreadsheets, mailed certificates, and an annual meeting run over email.
Nth Round exists to close that gap. Founded in 2018 by brothers Graham and Chris McConnell, the Philadelphia company builds software that gives private businesses and family enterprises the kind of ownership tooling the public markets have had for decades: an accurate cap table, a portal where shareholders can actually see what they hold, proxy voting that doesn't require licking envelopes, and - the part that makes people lean in - internal liquidity windows where shares can change hands without the company ever going public.
The pitch fits on a bumper sticker: liquidity without an IPO. The execution does not, which is precisely why it's a business.
Private ownership is complicated in ways that compound: multiple stock classes, decades of transaction history, cousins who inherited shares and never met the founder. Nth Round rolls it into a single system.
Keeps ownership records accurate across multiple entities, share classes, and generations - one source of truth instead of a folder of spreadsheets.
A secure, white-labeled portal where shareholders see holdings, documents, and activity - branded to the company, not to Nth Round.
Company-controlled windows and redemptions with ACH settlement, letting shareholders cash out a portion without a public market.
Turns the annual shareholder-vote scramble into a managed workflow that actually boosts participation.
Collects e-signatures on critical documents with full visibility into who has signed and who hasn't.
Records every contribution, dividend, and payout, and maintains a clean cost-basis history to make tax season less awful.
"Equity you can't sell is just a number on a certificate. Nth Round is trying to add a verb."- The company's stated tagline: "Don't Manage Your Equity - Maximize It."
Anyone can put "liquidity for private markets" on a slide. Very few will do the unglamorous grind required to actually deliver it: SOC 2 compliance, ACH integration, cost-basis tracking, digital stock certificates, an audit trail a CFO will stake their reputation on. That checklist reads like sedation, and that is exactly the point. The tedium is the barrier to entry. It's why Nth Round's customers are names you'd never associate with software - Barry-Wehmiller, Vermeer, Bush Brothers & Company, Asplundh - century-old operators who don't hand their ownership records to just anyone.
There's also a demographic wave underneath all of this. Founders age out. Second and third generations inherit shares they didn't ask for and can't easily value or sell. That handoff - the moment equity changes hands and everyone realizes the paperwork was never built for it - is exactly where Nth Round has parked itself.
A tell of a serious B2B company: its customers are institutions, not logos of other startups. Nth Round's published clients skew toward established private manufacturers, food companies, and holding groups.
Before Nth Round, Graham oversaw software development at AJO Partners, a quantitative investment firm managing roughly $25B, and earlier served as a product owner at Relay Network. He started the company to give private founders, shareholders, and investors a transparent way to trade their equity.
A technology entrepreneur with a background spanning blockchain, AI, and finance - the technical half of the founding pair. The platform's earliest versions leaned on blockchain to enable round-the-clock trading of private shares.
Graham and Chris McConnell launch Nth Round to let private-company shareholders trade equity transparently, anytime.
The company raises seed capital with New Enterprise Associates (NEA) participating.
Nth Round expands beyond cap tables into full shareholder administration - proxy voting, signature workflows, shareholder CRM - and earns SOC 2 compliance.
Adds large private manufacturers and holding companies to its client list and picks up G2 High Performer, Best Support, and Easiest To Do Business With badges.
"Best service I have ever experienced from a vendor."- Joan R., CFO, on the Nth Round platform (customer testimonial)
The assets under management at the quant fund where CEO Graham McConnell ran software before founding Nth Round.
Years of age for several of Nth Round's customers - the opposite of the typical fintech's client base.
Times most shareholders using the product have heard the name "Nth Round." The portal is white-labeled on purpose.
Brothers at the founding table. Nth Round is a McConnell family business that sells software to family businesses.