Making Unique Private Market Opportunities Accessible

Companies are staying private longer, making it difficult for employees and early shareholders to unlock the value of their equity before the company goes public. The result is a push for liquidity by private company shareholders looking to sell their shares pre-IPO and institutional and accredited investors wanting access to quality blocks. Next Round Capital facilities this process by presenting exclusive secondary market opportunities for investors to buy into some of the world’s most promising companies.

By the Numbers

Our Leadership

Our team and advisory board is comprised of wall street analysts, tech entrepreneurs and experienced venture investors.

  • team
    Ken Smythe
    Founder & CEO

    Ken Smythe is the Founder of Next Round Capital and leads the firm’s efforts across the institutional private markets and capital raising space. He has over 20 years of venture and finance experience and has transacted in over 50+ venture-backed companies across SaaS, Fintech, Consumer, and Biotech. He also has an extensive track record investing in early-stage companies across sectors, including DraftKings, Peloton, and SOFI.

    He began his career as an analyst at Neuberger Berman and later became President of a $5bln hedge fund, a private equity firm headquartered in London. Before founding Next Round Capital Partners, Ken was a Managing Director at Artist Capital, leading the Private Shares group.

    He is a frequent media contributor, including Bloomberg, TechCrunch, The New York Times, Forbes, and TheStreet.com. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Florida and has completed the Value Investing Program at Columbia University.

  • team
    Sharif Khaleel
    Managing Partner

    Sharif Khaleel is a Partner at Next Round Capital, based in San Francisco. He brings nearly 25 years of experience in institutional trading across multiple asset classes, including private secondaries, equities, derivatives, and convertible bonds. Prior to joining Next Round, Sharif served as Head of Institutional Trading at Nasdaq Private Market, where he led broker-dealer and institutional client relationships in the secondary market for private securities.

    His career includes senior roles at Zanbato, BNY Mellon, Farallon Capital, and BlackRock, where he held positions in sales trading, buy-side trading and risk management.

    Sharif’s deep expertise across both the buy-side and sell-side enhances Next Round’s capabilities in direct primary and secondary transactions, as well as co-investments—key pillars of the firm’s strategy as it continues to scale with LP and institutional partners.

    He holds an engineering degree from Columbia University and joins the firm at a time of meaningful growth, with Next Round recently surpassing $2 billion in transaction volume.