The Story of LODAS Markets: Building the Future of Alternative Investment Trading

Sometimes, the most transformative companies are born not from market research or competitor analysis, but from witnessing firsthand the pain points in an industry. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, LODAS Markets CEO Brian King shared how watching family members struggle with illiquid investments led to building a marketplace that’s reshaping how alternative assets are traded.

From Exchange Pioneer to Market Innovator

Brian’s journey to founding LODAS Markets wasn’t a straight line. As one of the original members of the Bats Markets startup team, he helped build what would become one of the world’s largest stock exchanges. “I was one of the original members of the startup team for Bats Markets Today. It was acquired by CBOE, and so now it has a lot of success in the markets,” Brian explains. His experience expanded internationally when he became “the first person on the ground to start building Bats Europe. Today, that is the largest exchange in Europe.”

But it was during his time at the New York Stock Exchange, where he spent almost five years overseeing trading, market structure, and ETF operations, that he began to see a bigger opportunity. The contrast between the highly liquid public markets he helped build and the struggles he witnessed in private markets became impossible to ignore.

The Genesis Moment

“I had a lot of family members and friends that were trapped in illiquid investments. And in some cases, the outcome was a total nightmare. They wanted to sell, but there just was no way out,” Brian recalls. This personal connection to the problem would become the catalyst for LODAS Markets. “When I left the NYSC, I knew I wanted to focus my attention on making traditionally illiquid markets more liquid.”

Building Through Crisis

Launching a company is never easy, but LODAS Markets faced an additional challenge: timing. “The crazy part though, is the timing in which we raised our first round was literally right when COVID happened,” Brian shares. This meant building relationships and raising capital in an entirely virtual environment. “There were very few people that I actually met in person while were raising our first round. And one of those people I just met for the first time in person about six months ago.”

Despite these challenges, the company found traction. “What’s been great for us is that we’ve been able to really attract a lot of buyside interest,” Brian notes. The platform now represents between one and two billion dollars in assets, demonstrating significant appetite for alternative investment liquidity.

Technology as the Game-Changer

Unlike previous attempts to create secondary markets for private investments, LODAS Markets took a technology-first approach. “We’ve made the process incredibly simple. Literally, somebody can set up an account in less than five minutes. But it’s all done through technology, which I think if you look back, even just three years, nothing was done with technology in this space,” Brian explains.

The Vision Ahead

Looking to the future, Brian sees technology breaking down the traditional silos in alternative investments. “Right now, everything works kind of in a silo and so to be able to connect to other institutions through technology and we’re just on the cusp of doing that now,” he shares. This vision of interconnected markets, enabled by technology, could fundamentally transform how alternative investments are traded and managed.

The company’s progress validates a core belief: that bringing modern exchange technology to traditionally illiquid markets can unlock significant value. As Brian puts it, “unlocking that liquidity is going to help this marketplace grow.” With alternative investments continuing to gain momentum, LODAS Markets is positioned at the intersection of traditional finance and technological innovation, working to ensure that the next generation of investors never finds themselves trapped in an illiquid investment with no way out.