Pavel Shibanov, Head of Investment Product at Accumulator, working on emerging financial infrastructure for private tech markets, on how product thinking is reshaping private markets.
Over the past two decades, trillions of dollars have flowed into venture-backed and privately held tech companies. The infrastructure that moves that capital, though, still feels dated – especially next to public markets, which have had more than a century to evolve.
Pavel Shibanov argues that liquidity constraints in private companies are no longer a temporary inconvenience but a structural issue. Drawing on experience across corporate development, venture-backed startups, and product design in private markets, he focuses on how this structural constraint can be addressed at the infrastructure level rather than through isolated transactions. The lifecycle of tech companies has shifted, and fixing the problem won’t come from more transactions alone – it requires a different kind of infrastructure.
Before joining Accumulator as Head of Investment Product, Shibanov worked in corporate development and growth financing at Gett, a ride-hailing unicorn. He later founded Capsula, a fashion-tech platform built around AI-driven personalization, which grew to $3.6 million in annual revenue and a team of more than 150. Today, he works on products at the intersection of investing, data, and technology within a private market estimated in the trillions of dollars..
– Pavel, the total unlocked equity for founders through products you work on has surpassed $400 million. What’s driving that growth?
– What we’re seeing is a market finally surfacing a structural issue that’s been there for a long time but has only recently become impossible to ignore. A large part of that growth comes from designing repeatable structures that allow shareholders to manage exposure without relying on one-off transactions.
Public markets had over a century to build systems that let capital and shares move with relative ease. Private markets took a different path. Over the past few decades, huge amounts of capital poured into venture and high-growth tech companies, allowing them to stay private much longer.
As a result, significant value builds up inside private companies well before any traditional exit – IPO or acquisition. Founders, early employees, and other shareholders end up holding meaningful wealth, but with very limited flexibility.
When private markets were smaller, that friction was tolerable. With trillions locked into private companies, it’s not.
– How big is this market today, and where are we in its development?
– The numbers are striking. The global private tech market is worth roughly $4.7 trillion. Much of it can remain locked up for years, because liquidity still depends on a very narrow set of events.
Company lifecycles have changed – firms stay private longer, and valuations grow within private markets. You end up with a massive pool of value that doesn’t move easily.
It’s still early days. Public markets took decades to build infrastructure that allows capital to circulate efficiently. Private markets are younger, but change is happening at a different speed now. Trillion-dollar ecosystems can form within a decade. That creates a rare chance to rethink how they work.
– You worked at Gett and later founded Capsula. How did that path lead you to building infrastructure for private markets?
– At Gett, I was in corporate development and growth financing. It’s an environment that moves incredibly fast – you see how quickly markets scale when the right systems and incentives are in place.
Then, as a founder, I experienced the ecosystem from the other side. You spend years building a product, raising capital, growing the company. At the same time, you see how rigid the structures around private capital can be.
You can clearly see value being created. But also how hard it is for that value to move before a traditional exit.
That shift in perspective changes how you think. You stop focusing on individual transactions. Start asking where the friction sits and what’s missing at the infrastructure level.
What drew me to Accumulator was the idea that this can be solved systemically, not deal by deal. We’re not trying to handle each case in isolation. We’re building a framework – structured ways for shareholders to manage concentrated exposure. That naturally led to how I think about my role today.
– How would you describe your role within this emerging category?
– My role sits at the intersection of product design and private market infrastructure — designing products and structures that combine market logic, product design, and investment processes into systems that can scale with the private market itself. In practice, that means moving from one-off transactions toward repeatable frameworks that can be applied across a broader set of companies and shareholders.
– For someone new to this space, what do you actually do in practice?
– We’re building financial infrastructure for private tech ownership.
In practice, this involves working with founders, early employees, and investors in high-growth private companies, many of whom have the majority of their net worth concentrated in a single illiquid asset.
New mechanisms are emerging to make that exposure more flexible while the company continues to grow as a private business. The broader ambition is infrastructure for private tech markets. As this category develops, the goal is to move from bespoke transactions toward standardized systems that can operate across the broader private market. The immediate starting point is helping shareholders manage concentrated positions in a structured way.
– Is this a niche issue, or does it show up across the market?
– Surprisingly universal.
Conversations around shareholder liquidity come up across the board. You see it in companies like SpaceX, Discord, Perplexity, Epic Games, GrubMarket, Deel, TravelPerk – category leaders, multi-billion-dollar unicorns.
That tells you the problem isn’t limited to smaller startups or edge cases. It runs through the entire private tech ecosystem. It reflects a broader shift where managing private company equity is emerging as a distinct layer within financial markets.
When the same structural constraint shows up at that scale, it’s clearly not niche. In many ways, the movement of capital in private companies is itself starting to look like a distinct asset class.
– Does building infrastructure for this market require a different approach than traditional finance?
– In some respects, yes.
Traditional finance tends to center on transactions and structures. That still matters, but infrastructure calls for a broader lens.
You have to think about how systems behave over time. How participants interact. How information moves. Whether processes can become repeatable rather than one-off.
That’s where product thinking really helps. Large parts of private markets were never designed with scalability or user experience in mind. Once you start treating them as systems rather than isolated deals, you begin to see how much more efficient they could be.
My background in ride-hailing and building a startup comes in handy here – it pushes you to think about systems and scale very differently.
– If this infrastructure evolves the way you expect, what will look different in five to ten years?
– Private markets will start to behave more like mature financial ecosystems.
That doesn’t mean they’ll become identical to public markets. Private companies will still have reasons to stay private – flexibility, long-term decision-making. The ability to build without quarterly pressure.
But the infrastructure around private capital will be far more developed. Shareholders will have structured ways to manage concentrated exposure. Information will move more transparently across the ecosystem. Transactions that feel slow or highly situational today will become easier to navigate.
Private markets will remain private – but the systems around them will be much more functional.
About
Pavel Shibanov is Head of Investment Product at Accumulator, a platform building financial infrastructure for private tech markets. His work focuses on designing products and structures that help shareholders in venture-backed and late-stage private companies manage concentrated equity exposure. He also advises technology startups in AI, mobility, and edtech on product strategy, growth, and fundraising.
He previously worked in corporate development and growth financing at Gett, a ride-hailing unicorn, and founded Capsula, a fashion-tech platform that scaled to over $3.6M ARR, and a team of more than 150. Capsula received industry recognition and was shortlisted for multiple entrepreneurship and innovation awards, including recognition by Inc.
In his current role, he works at the intersection of product design, data, and investment processes, contributing to the development of infrastructure for a private technology market estimated at $4.7 trillion. He also advises technology startups in AI, mobility, and edtech on product strategy, growth, and fundraising.
