AST® announced the launch of a new business to meet the varied and complex needs of private companies. AST Private Company Solutions™ is developing innovative and next-generation technology, products and services to support the entire lifecycle of a private company, including when the next phase involves going public.
AST Private Company Solutions will introduce a robust offering for various types of private companies, from venture-backed to private equity-owned, including capitalization and waterfall tracking, employee stock plan administration, and related transactional and liquidity support. The company will be headquartered in Silicon Valley, one of the U.S.’s primary epicenters for start-up activity, and will launch its solution later this year.
AST has appointed Carine Schneider, FGE, to lead AST Private Company Solutions as President. An experienced and well-connected entrepreneur in the private company market and global compensation industry, she has held positions including President of Nasdaq Private Market Equity Solutions, CEO and Board Director at Certent, and Founder, CEO and Board Director at Global Shares. She was formerly a Partner with PwC and Nua Group and has held senior roles at Morgan Stanley and Towers Watson. Schneider was also named one of the “100 Influential Women in Silicon Valley” by the Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2017, among other honors. In 1993 she founded the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals (NASPP), in 1999 founded the Global Equity Organization (GEO), and over the years has launched several other related industry organizations.
Central to the buildout of AST Private Company Solutions’s innovative software is Steve Madeira, who has joined as CTO. An expert technologist, he was most recently CTO of SynchroNet and, before that, Head of Product Operations at Nasdaq Private Market and Senior Vice President at Certent. Earlier in his career, he held various senior positions at Navio Systems, Inc., ePeople, Philips Electronics, Siemens and IBM.
Madeira will be joined by Eric Kissler as Chief Architect. Kissler was formerly Principal Architect with Certent and one of the company’s first engineers.