The family office has long outgrown a safe full of contracts and transformed into a set of specialized platforms. Through some, you enter Blackstone and KKR funds well below the institutional threshold; through others, you buy a stake in SpaceX long before IPO; a third group manages cap tables and assembles SPVs for club deals; a fourth holds crypto assets under banking licenses. Each platform is a choice of counterparty, jurisdiction, and disclosure regime, and understanding it requires the same diligence as analyzing a holding structure.
Below is a map of five categories with a breakdown of key platforms in each. The goal is simple: show how the market works and what to look for before entrusting a platform with money or data. For a family building a family office, this is part of the same architecture as legal entities, trusts, and accounts.
Five Categories of the "Gentleman's Set"
1. Access to Private Markets
Feeder platforms pool capital from several private investors into a single structure and use it to enter PE, VC, or private credit funds—below the institutional minimum of tens of millions. Moonfare provides access to funds with a threshold its own FAQ puts at €50,000 for portfolio funds and €100,000 for classic feeder funds, both depending on where the investor is located; its secondary fund starts at €25,000. Access is stated for professional and semi-professional categories rather than the general retail public. iCapital operates as a B2B "pipeline": managers connect clients to alternatives without building infrastructure from scratch. The investor buys a share in a feeder fund, which itself acts as an LP in the fund, so the fund's fees stack with the platform's fees, and information rights and exit terms are determined by the feeder agreement.
One thing to keep in mind about iCapital: a private investor never opens an account there. The platform sells infrastructure to banks, brokerage houses and independent advisers, and the family sees it only as the alternatives "menu" its manager presents. How that machinery is assembled — feeder funds, subscription, capital calls, reporting and the fees that sit on top of the fund's own — is covered in the iCapital profile.
2. Secondary Market for Private Shares
Here, stakes in pre-IPO companies and employee options are traded while the company itself remains private. Hiive displays an order book with visible bids and asks; Forge Global (NYSE: FRGE) has assembled a full stack—data, valuation, and execution; Nasdaq Private Market, spun out in July 2021 into a standalone company with strategic investments from SVB, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, focuses on company-sponsored tenders—liquidity by invitation of the issuer itself. Legally, almost every transaction hinges on ROFR and company consent: shares are bound by transfer restrictions, and the stated "price" reflects the balance of supply and demand and diverges from the official business valuation.
3. Cap Table, Funds, and SPVs
This category manages ownership records and assembles structures for co-investments. Carta is the standard for cap table and fund administration — in January 2024 its founder Henry Ward put those two businesses at about $250m and $100m a year — and in the same month it exited secondary trading. Ward's stated reason was structural: while Carta holds the data, clients will suspect it of trading on that data, so the company chose trust over a line then worth about $3m a year. AngelList and Sydecar handle syndicates and "club" deals; Sydecar promises fixed pricing and assembly without carry on administration. An SPV itself is a separate legal entity (usually a Delaware LLC) for a single transaction, and the cap table remains a register that reflects rights but does not replace corporate documents.
4. Institutional-Grade Crypto Custody
Institutional custody of digital assets rests on licensing and technology—these are different pillars. The OCC conditionally approved the conversion of Anchorage Trust Company into Anchorage Digital Bank, National Association, on 13 January 2021, and for several years no comparable national trust charter went to a digital-asset firm; on 12 December 2025 the OCC conditionally approved five more — de novo charters for First National Digital Currency Bank and Ripple National Trust Bank, and conversions for BitGo Bank & Trust, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos Trust Company. Those approvals are preliminary and contingent on the OCC's pre-opening requirements. Coinbase Prime offers custody and prime brokerage from a public company (NASDAQ: COIN), Kraken holds assets through a Wyoming SPDI banking license. Fireblocks began on the technology side — MPC storage deployed by exchanges and custodians themselves — but since August 2024 its affiliate Fireblocks Trust Company, LLC has held a New York limited purpose trust charter from the NYDFS, so the technology provider and the licensed custodian are separate entities inside one group. For a manager, the key question is who qualifies as a qualified custodian under the Investment Advisers Act, and who is merely a technology provider.
5. Alternative Assets
Platforms in this category securitize what was previously illiquid: art, wine, collectible assets. Masterworks buys a painting by Banksy or Warhol, registers it to a separate LLC, and sells shares in that LLC through Reg A+—essentially a mini-IPO with an offering circular filed with the SEC; the stated minimum is $15,000 per offering (exceptions are granted case by case), holding horizon 3–10 years, limited liquidity through an internal secondary market. The investor owns a share in the company that owns the painting, while the manager controls the asset and timing of sale.
How to Read a Platform: Counterparty, Jurisdiction, Disclosure
Any of these platforms can be analyzed along three axes. Counterparty: who actually owns the assets—a bank with a trust license, a broker, a technology provider, or an LLC for a single object. Jurisdiction: where the structure is registered and which law and bankruptcy regime it is subject to—Delaware, Wyoming, EU, or offshore, and what economic substance backs it. Disclosure: what reports and information rights the investor receives—from a full offering circular under Reg A+ to a sparse cap table extract. The answers to these three questions say more about a platform than its brand.
Regulation: Who Is Even Allowed
Access to most platforms depends on investor status. In the US, this is an accredited investor—individual income above $200,000 ($300,000 jointly with a spouse) in each of the two most recent years, or net worth above $1 million excluding the primary residence; for the most exclusive funds, the qualified purchaser threshold is added, at not less than $5 million in investments. In the EU, there is a division into professional and semi-professional investors, and the ELTIF 2.0 reform—Regulation (EU) 2023/606, applying from 10 January 2024—removed the ELTIF's own €10,000 minimum initial investment and the 10% cap on a retail investor's aggregate exposure, leaving the MiFID II suitability assessment as the filter. Custodians have their own filter: qualified custodian status under the Investment Advisers Act determines who may hold client assets—which is why federal and Wyoming licenses in crypto are so highly valued.
Packaged products sitting on the same client menu carry an admission filter of their own. A structured note reaches an EU retail investor only with a PRIIPs KID and after a MiFID II suitability check, and that check says nothing about the issuer's credit standing: what the KID actually discloses, how an autocall and a reverse convertible behave, and why liquidity here is promised without being guaranteed are set out in structured products and notes.
What Has Changed in the Last Couple of Years
The platform market is changing rapidly. Carta left secondary trading in January 2024 and focused on cap table and fund administration. Nasdaq Private Market has operated as an independent company since July 2021, with strategic investments from SVB, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. In crypto, December 2025 ended the single-charter picture: the OCC conditionally approved five national trust bank charters for digital-asset firms, subject to pre-opening conditions, and institutional custody ceased to be a one-bank story. In parallel, ELTIF 2.0 has applied in Europe since 10 January 2024. The overall vector is more access and simultaneously more regulation.
Q/A
Which five facts should be established before comparing platform brands?
Identify the contractual counterparty, the entity that actually holds the asset, the governing jurisdiction and insolvency regime, the disclosure package and the complete fee stack. Separately confirm who controls a sale and which transfer or exit restrictions apply.
How can an investor tell what is actually owned through a feeder or SPV?
The subscription agreement, constitutional documents and ownership register answer that question, not the platform interface. The investor may own an interest in a feeder or SPV rather than the underlying fund or company, so information, voting, distribution and exit rights must be read in those documents.
Does a quote on a private-secondary platform guarantee that the trade will close?
No. The SEC notes that private-company securities are often restricted and a resale must be registered or fit an exemption; issuer documents may add rights of first refusal and company consent. A displayed bid or ask shows interest, but does not guarantee approval, settlement or liquidity.
Does accredited-investor status mean that an investment is suitable?
No. The status determines eligibility for some unregistered offerings; it does not certify quality, liquidity or suitability. An eligible investor must still examine disclosure, valuation, lock-ups, capital calls, conflicts and every layer of fees before committing.
Does custody technology make its provider a qualified custodian?
No. Identify the licensed legal entity that actually maintains the cash or securities, and verify the contract, account structure and direct statements. Under the SEC custody rule, a qualified custodian maintains assets in a client-named account or an account containing only client assets.