A Fragmented Market Gets More Fragmented

Private markets were never designed with clarity in mind. Even the public-facing players — Forge, EquityZen, Hiive — only scratch the surface of what exists behind the scenes. Broker-dealers, SPVs, family offices, institutional desks, and platforms-of-platforms make up a dizzying ecosystem of partial access and uneven information.

We wrote about this in more depth here, but the short version is simple: access is expanding, but cohesion isn’t.

Now, two more names have entered the chat: Hill and Gondola. On paper, they’re distinct platforms with different audiences. In practice, they’re tightly linked — and may signal a new generation of infrastructure forming in the shadows.

Meet the Newcomers: Hill and Gondola

Hill presents itself as a clean, modern portal for buying and selling pre-IPO shares. The interface feels more like a fintech app than a brokerage site, intentionally so. Its focus is accredited retail investors: individuals who want exposure to private tech companies without calling a broker or wiring funds into a mystery SPV. As of this writing, Hill is still in waitlist mode, signaling either demand or a cautious rollout.

Gondola, by contrast, is aimed at institutions. The site is sparse. There’s no self-serve signup. Instead, it emphasizes advisory, sourcing, and custom liquidity solutions, the kind of language designed for family offices and fund managers, not retail investors.

Despite their differences, the two platforms are deeply connected. They share a founder. They use the same broker-dealer. Even some of their web infrastructure overlaps. To the outside observer, they may look like separate entities. But functionally, they operate as two sides of the same coin.

From Forge to FNEX: Where These Platforms Came From

Hill and Gondola didn’t emerge from nowhere. Their founder, Andrew Benson, was previously COO at River Financial, a bitcoin-focused fintech. Gondola’s CEO, Patrick Hughes, held leadership roles at Forge Trust and PENSCO, two of the most entrenched custodians in the space. These are operators who’ve seen the fragmentation up close, and decided to build around it rather than fight it.

But rather than launch their own broker-dealer (a heavy lift), both platforms are structured atop FNEX, a little-known but fully licensed firm that provides regulatory infrastructure behind the scenes. FNEX handles the compliance, trade execution, and custody. It’s not flashy, but it’s functional, and increasingly central to the mechanics of both Hill and Gondola.

The decision to build on FNEX says a lot. It reflects a strategy of speed, specialization, and focus: let someone else deal with regulation while you own the user experience. Whether that bet pays off at scale remains to be seen. But in a market where most “platforms” are actually wrappers around other wrappers, it’s a play that fits the moment.

Retail Meets Institutional: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Hill and Gondola may serve different audiences, but they’re part of the same machine. Hill is built for individuals, tech employees, accredited investors, family offices managing under $100M. Gondola is designed for the other side of the table: funds, secondaries desks, and institutions trading in size.

The split isn’t just branding. It reflects a real difference in how private equity is bought and sold. Retail investors expect speed, clean interfaces, and pre-vetted access. Institutions expect negotiated terms, bespoke deal structuring, and full discretion. Trying to serve both from a single product is difficult, maybe impossible.

By operating in parallel, Hill and Gondola avoid that tension. But they still share infrastructure: the same compliance engine (FNEX), the same leadership, and likely the same underlying data. Deals that surface on one platform may originate on the other. It’s segmentation, not separation.

Whether this model scales is an open question. But it’s a smart way to acknowledge the market’s fragmentation without trying to paper over it.

Not Quite Forge, Not Quite Hiive

Hill and Gondola both borrow from the playbooks of better-known platforms, but neither fits neatly into an existing mold.

Hill echoes the clean, tech-forward interface of Hiive, a self-serve marketplace with no visible sales team, built for speed and transparency. But it stops short of Hiive’s full-stack approach. There’s no live bid-ask, no visible liquidity, and less emphasis on execution mechanics. It feels like a polished front end built atop someone else’s pipes, because it is.

Gondola, on the other hand, channels the institutional orientation of Forge. It emphasizes access, sourcing, and relationships. But unlike Forge, it’s not built for scale. There’s no massive inventory, no legacy infrastructure, and no illusion of being a public market proxy. Gondola seems comfortable staying lean, fewer clients, larger trades, less noise.

That’s not a weakness. In a market where many platforms are overextended or overengineered, simplicity can be a strategy. Hill and Gondola may not do everything , but they appear to know exactly who they’re doing it for.

Powered by FNEX: Who’s Really Running the Trades?

Neither Hill nor Gondola is a registered broker-dealer. Instead, they operate through FNEX, a behind-the-scenes brokerage firm that handles the regulatory heavy lifting: KYC, custody, trade execution, compliance.

This isn’t unique. Plenty of platforms outsource their regulatory function. What’s notable is how central FNEX is to both Hill and Gondola’s model. It’s not just a service provider; it’s the legal gateway that makes their businesses possible. Without FNEX, neither platform could run transactions.

And FNEX doesn’t just power the plumbing, it also licenses the people. Andrew Benson and Patrick Hughes, the executives behind Hill and Gondola, are registered representatives of FNEX. That puts them inside the same regulatory framework, even as their platforms maintain separate brands.

For investors, this matters. FNEX is the entity responsible for safeguarding funds, verifying credentials, and executing trades. Hill and Gondola shape the experience, but FNEX is where the actual risk and compliance resides. In a market full of wrappers, it’s worth knowing who’s under the hood.

The Rise of Dual-Platform Strategies

Hill and Gondola don’t advertise themselves as a bundled offering. But their structure suggests a strategic pairing: one platform for individuals, another for institutions, both powered by the same broker-dealer and led by the same founder.

It’s not the only example of this approach. Forge has Forge Global for institutions and Forge Trust for self-directed investors. Hiive blends tech automation with a traditional brokerage team. Even EquityZen has toyed with institutional portals alongside its retail-focused listings.

The model is emerging quietly, but it makes sense. Retail and institutional investors have fundamentally different needs, not just in ticket size, but in how they discover, diligence, and close deals. Rather than force one product to serve both audiences, platforms are beginning to split the stack: clean interface on one side, concierge service on the other.

Hill and Gondola appear to be doing just that. Whether it’s a temporary design choice or a long-term strategy, it reflects a broader shift in how access is being architected. The market isn’t consolidating, it’s specializing.

What This Means for Investors

The arrival of Hill and Gondola is encouraging, not because they’ll solve fragmentation, but because they acknowledge it. Their approach doesn’t try to be all things to all investors. It builds around the edges, creating purpose-built entry points for different audiences while outsourcing the messiest parts of the system.

That’s progress. But it also means investors need to be more vigilant. More platforms means more pricing discrepancies, more regulatory footnotes, more hidden dependencies. A deal on Hill might look clean until you realize FNEX is the actual counterparty. A quote from Gondola might be real, or just routing through a family office that found the deal elsewhere.

In short: access is improving. Navigation isn’t. The burden still falls on investors to compare terms, verify who’s involved, and understand what they’re actually buying. These new platforms offer new doors, but the map is still incomplete.

If you’re considering investing on a platform like Hill, Gondola, or any of their peers, make sure you’re reading the terms carefully and comparing opportunities across the market. Cold Capital exists to help with that. Our research aims to bring clarity to private markets, and if you ever need a second opinion, you can always reach out to [email protected].

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