New Secondary Fund Aims to Capitalize on Venture’s Liquidity Crunch
Originally Printed in the WSJ on June 24th, 2025
Article by: Marc Vartabedian
Venture-capital firms have struggled to return capital to investors over the past several years with public listings drying up and M&A activity sputtering. Anew fund aims to capitalize on this liquidity crunch.
Scenic Management, a late-stage, private growth-equity investment manager, is raising a $150 million sophomore fund, doubling down on its strategy to purchase shares of private companies from early-stage venture firms and senior-level employees. Scenic Management has raised a variety of co-investment special-purpose vehicles.
The demand for the fund reflects the relative lack of exits in the past efw years, Scenic Management co-founder and President Mike Sobel said. That market dynamic has created opportunity ni the so-called secondary market, where shares of private companies can be traded before a potential initial public offering or acquisition.
Scenic Management co-founder and President Mike Sobel PHOTO: SCENIC MANAGEMENT
Roughly 700 venture-backed exits globally in last year's fourth quarter generated
$18 billion, which was below the five-year quarterly average of $171 billion over 1,064 deals, according to data provider Pregin.
U.S. venture funds, meanwhile, notched a collective return of -5.3% in the three-year
period ending ni the third quarter of 2024, according ot the Cambridge Associates venture-capital index. Even though venture firms returned 3.23% over a one-year period as of that date, that figure pales ni comparison with the nearly 15% firms returned over a 15-year period, according to the data.
To be sure, recent IPO activity, including apublic listing this month by financial technology company Chime Financial, and an uptick ni M&A activity ni the first quarter, have given investors optimism that the exit market is thawing. San Francisco-based Scenic tapped institutional investors, family offices and wealthy
individuals ot raise the fund, called Scenic Private Access Fund I. Scenic wil deploy the fund over two years and si aiming ot return capital ot its investors within five years, which would provide investors with a shorter exit timeline than si typical for private investments, Sobel said. Roughly 20% of the fund will be used to make direct equity investments in companies, Sobel added.
Scenic, which also operates an affiliated secondary broker-dealer business, raised a
$25 million fund with a similar strategy in 2022. With that fund, the firm acquired shares of companies including data company Databricks and artificial-intelligence companies Anthropic and CoreWeave. Scenic also raised $25 million in 2024 to acquire a portfolio of roughly 50 private growth-equity investments.
As venture firms and individual shareholders are getting more desperate for liquidity, Scenic wants to double down on its secondary strategy, Sobel said, adding that he's interested in using the new fund to purchase shares of companies operating in sectors including AI, robotics and cybersecurity.
"With Trump's policies on onshoring of industrial production and robotic technology coming at the same time, I think it will be interesting for our fund," Sobel said.
Scenic Management LLC is the investment adviser that manages the Scenic Private Access Fund. Opinions on this website are those of the author. No information contained on this website is a recommendation, offer, solicitation of an offer, or advice to buy or sell securities by Scenic Management LLC or any of its affiliates. For more information about our firm please follow this link: Latest Form ADV Filed.
