What we talked about
Tom Milar shares how he’s building Equista, a platform for equity management and valuations:and why he believes the private markets need better pricing infrastructure before liquidity can truly scale. Tom explains how the company evolved from stock issuance and cap table administration into a valuation engine that aims to price private companies in real time, from early-stage startups to unicorns.
Show notes
Tom Milar has one pointed observation for founders who are excited about raising money: ending up with 35 percent ownership of your own company is “a disaster,” and most founders arrive there by giving equity away too easily, too early. His companies exist partly because he got tired of seeing that pattern repeat across thousands of cap tables.
What we covered
- Equista has grown from basic stock issuance and cap table administration into what Tom believes is one of the largest private company valuation engines on the market, currently valuing over $5 billion in client assets monthly and targeting $6–7 trillion in real-time valuations of unicorn-stage companies within months.
- Tom’s core advice to founders is “money first, always”:he describes a simple rule where if you have 500 emails to send but a missed call from someone ready to pay $7,000 for your service, you call that person back first. All his companies have been cash-flow positive as a result.
- Cheqly (his neobank for startups) was built on the AML compliance infrastructure Equista developed in-house to serve clients in Hong Kong, which grew to match bank-level anti-money-laundering standards. That infrastructure earned them MSO licensing approval in Hong Kong in 2020.
- The long-term vision connects both companies: Equista sets a real-time price for private company shares, and Cheqly provides the payment rails so shareholders can actually transact:cash for equity:without routing through third-party systems.
- Hong Kong was Tom’s proving ground: he describes starting a company there as a “business shock” because company formation took as little as one hour and the AML regulatory environment was far more sophisticated than anything he’d encountered before.
- Tom draws on Jaromir Jagr as a framework for resilience: hard moments happen to everyone, including competitors, and the founders who know how to get through them faster are the ones who win.
About Tom Milar
Tom Milar is the founder and CEO of Equista, a stock management and valuation platform serving over 2,000 companies with $270 billion in assets under administration, and the co-founder of Cheqly, a neobank providing business accounts and cards for startups. He has built and sold companies across the US, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasmilar
- Website: https://eqvista.com
Episode 109 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-vetted podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we’re joined by Thomas Millar, he’s founder and CEO of EQVista, a stock management and valuation platform serving 2000 companies and reporting 270 billion in assets under administration. He’s also the founder of Checkly,
focused on business accounts and cards for startups, plus cap table and valuation services. Thomas has built companies across the US and Asia, navigated acquisitions, and today is pushing towards a future where private markets are simpler, faster, and more transparent. Thomas, welcome to the show.
Tom (00:49) Federico, thank you so much for a lovely introduction. I’m happy to be here.
Federico Ramallo (00:55) Thank you, thank you. We’re honored to have you here today. So let’s start by talking about what is EQ Vista? And I am pronouncing it correctly.
Tom (01:05) It’s actually Equista. Yes, you’re almost there. Equista. Yeah, many people got it wrong for one very simple reason, Vista, like EQ, Vista. But actually, the name is Equista, like equity.
Federico Ramallo (01:09) I knew it.
Tom (01:23) I didn’t come up with the name, it was my partner. I’m product-focused founder. So I was like, you know what, it doesn’t matter. Yes, why not? I usually come up with really weird names for all the companies, so I’m the last one who should actually advise on names. that’s pretty much it. What is Equista?
We have already defined the purpose multiple times during the time when it comes from the machine. We believe that the pricing infrastructure for private companies is something we would like to change. We started with simple equity management admin.
stock issue and secondary administration. But we changed that purpose little bit when we realized that the software part, especially in equity management, it’s human driven. Obviously, it’s a very consulting based product.
Everybody is trying to sell SaaS, but in equity management SaaS is not really easy to sell, so you need to have a bunch of very knowledgeable people who can advise on multiple issues. It’s a mix of legal, tax, compliance, then we have obviously tech.
So we moved from a pretty admin to valuations, lot of valuations. Over $5 billion in our client’s assets valuations monthly. If we are right, I believe we are, we’ve been a large, we’re not the largest.
valuation engine of the market. So we will value all the unicorns in the near future. So it’s going to be 6, 7 trillion dollars constant valuation for the private companies.
So, back to what is a Clistar, they give a stock price, so either you are small style, race safe round, all the way to unicorns, we have a unicorn company, have one of the largest AI companies on the market.
with over 25 billion dollars in in asset and in clients we have done.
something billion dollars. So we go rapidly. So again stop distribution and try some discovery for startups. That’s what we do.
Federico Ramallo (03:54) What is one thing founders get wrong about equity?
Tom (03:59) I think fundamentally people or founders underestimate what can be done with equity. It’s really a stake in the company ownership. So I have seen trillions in equities.
over the years. necessarily clients but different cap tables, different equity distribution models. And what’s wrong, I believe that people or founders give up equity very easily. I think we should bootstrap or keep bootstrapping as long as we can because you don’t want to end up…
and owning 35 % of the company. That’s a disaster. It would be great if you built a unicorn with $35 billion.
valuations, valuation, but that doesn’t happen often. I think the minimalistic approach is very important. It pushes you to build better product than having…
20, 30, 50 million dollars to spend and in exchange for the equity. So I believe that the equity is something that we always should cherish a lot. And don’t jump from ground to ground. Focus on the product. Don’t exchange much equity for cash.
that’s probably the biggest pain I see over the market, over time. I can understand that the reason is that founders try to build a product very quickly, so they need the cash. But there’s really a few companies, the unique companies, which can make it to unicorn status.
and the school field founders, employees and investors expectations on the multiples, on the exit multiples. So that’s what I think is the crucial part. Get cash in from the clients building very, very strong product rather than getting cash based on a pitch deck and their connections.
investors.
Federico Ramallo (06:08) What is one thing founders should do early to avoid equity problems later?
Tom (06:15) Mm-hmm.
It’s just a plan better. I would even get a few loans. Try to bootstrap the company, get funding.
start a company small, that’s actually what I said before, but to make it more practical, it’s, you use your 50, 100k to build MVP, some product which can generate revenue, cash, scale slowly, and then once you see that there is opportunity.
to attack the market, then they go for larger rounds. But again, not over, higher.
just believe as much as you can so to catch last one of them.
So you don’t do it yourself.
Federico Ramallo (06:59) Right.
So tell us a little bit about Chikly. What is the company about and why did you start it?
Tom (07:08) Yeah, I always had a dream to own a new bank and process payments for startups, for companies. I have already started in Hong Kong back in 2010, built multiple companies.
And we became one of the largest incorporation of service provider in Hong Kong. And actually built quite robust AML or anti-manual.
platform on the market, usually just for ourselves so we could serve our clients. So what we did is that when you call the clients you have to check their background.
PEP, political exposed person, we have over 40-50 sanction lists. We just made sure that we update the list. We won’t apply against this list.
By the time where our AML compliance processes became very very strong we were like, know what, actually, look at what we have built. We have the same AML policies as banks. And all the processes, the compliance…
software as we were using back then, still using one of them is Refinitiv. So we applied for a new bank for MSO licensing in Hong Kong and we got approved. The only one who didn’t take the system were just, you know, pay, know, just multiple process payments for our clients, you know, didn’t hide behind any…
fancy, fancy banks and the regulator approved us, that was in Hong Kong. Back then it was 2020, I was based here in the States and I was like, hey, we are here in United States, so we should start a bank also here in the States where I am, you while in Hong Kong. So we partnered with M Bank.
and they were extremely helpful. They helped us to build the transaction monitoring system, onboarding system, constant AML processes where you could monitor the clients. And we launched Neowen with minimum capital so we can open accounts for startups.
back up online and check clinic Vista. These two platforms will become one at some point because there is a huge opportunity for transactions between the shareholders, the security market.
So by exchange of funds for equity. So that’s actually why the equity staff should pay the loan. That’s what we want to do. So we have two shareholders, our future shareholder and shareholder. And the shareholder would like to sell stocks or options and would like to process these transactions.
So without rails, payment rails, you won’t be able to do it. So that’s why we have Checklink, where you can open accounts for both the seller and the buyer of your stocks. And that can change.
cash for equity. So that’s why we have it. Besides that we can also offer different type of equity financing for the companies as a venture debt. Because we have a great indicator, it’s called 490, 490 evaluation. You guys might have heard of it, it’s evaluation where you get a stock price of your ordinary stocks.
and you usually get it when you raise the money. So 49A Volvo is a great indicator for the venture debt. Because you go under two religions and could usually close, Azabek could usually close venture debt when the company closes the route. So it’s either after or usually before the sub-mirror that you rent.
Federico Ramallo (11:10) Right.
Interesting.
Tom (11:13) So that’s why we have checked it.
Federico Ramallo (11:17) Right, right, very interesting. What was the biggest culture shock when you started working in Hong Kong?
Tom (11:23) You know what, think that everything is so fast. We have a saying that New York win it is Hong Kong second.
So if you think that New York is very fast, then Hong Kong is even faster. ⁓ So the business is extremely fast. It started with simple thing as a company formation. When we started, there wasn’t time. You could really set up a company in one hour from the idea. ⁓ So that was…
Federico Ramallo (11:37) wow.
Wow.
Tom (11:54) Not really a cultural shock, it was more like a business shock. But yeah, I think that…
There was the biggest exciting moment where we were launching a company formation product, the incorporation services, right? And it was just so easy for us. So I wouldn’t have to go to the company registrar. In the United States we know it as a company secretary. Most of the states in the US now allow you to open an account.
account of the company online but Hong Kong was one of the first one and so it’s so one is the company formation you know how fast it was and then probably the AML mentioned earlier because Hong Kong was so advanced in AML
So it was also quite a shock how how strange the regulation is in Hong Kong. So that was probably the biggest shock. Especially for me as a young entrepreneur, I had little knowledge about it.
punch industry back then. But we grew together, might say, the AML in Hong Kong and myself. And obviously, the food is definitely different. But the Hong Kong economy is very mature. You have a lot of wealthy people in Hong Kong.
So I keep joking about all these restaurants because the best Italian restaurant is not in Italy. It’s where the people have money. That’s Hong Kong, New York, because they can always get the best ingredients and people can pay for it.
Federico Ramallo (13:57) Right. Yeah, when you have an audience with lots of resources, then you’re going to have better restaurants and better services.
Tom (14:04) Yeah, you
know exactly what I mean. The best Mexican restaurant could be in Mexico, right? But there’s a high chance that the best Mexican restaurant could be in New York, probably.
Federico Ramallo (14:08) Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, there is one taco place in Market Street that is really good on San Francisco. It’s really, good. But one of the things that I notice is that it’s a small taco place. But then when you start eating food around the US, I think it’s because of FDA regulation that all of the food has a similar taste, right?
Tom (14:27) All right.
Federico Ramallo (14:45) And then when you go to Mexico, you have so many different flavors, right? It is less regulated. Yeah. Which could be good, but also sometimes it’s bad, right? Because the food, you know, could not be as healthy, right? Yeah.
Tom (14:49) You
True. True.
True, that’s true, that’s
Similarly with, you you just make this comparison, Mexico and US, so I always see that as AML standards, know, anti-money laundering standards that in the US is not as heavily regulated as in some other places, which is quite, also quite interesting, so yeah.
Federico Ramallo (15:26) What was your hardest moment building your companies?
Tom (15:28) You know what I think is just these constant worries, You just worry constantly. You just always push that company on another level, right? And just you worry. You worry so much, right? That what keeps you pushing, right? I think, I think…
I’m a product founder oriented so I would say the key products were built by me. So the most recent one is a real-time evolution. I’m not one of these founders who constantly raise money so obviously the Kishore was always…
It is still always an issue. But the beautiful thing is that if you start building a company,
with intention to make money, you have a massive advantage. Massive advantage. You understand the product, understand the market, you understand how quickly to change the product, how quickly to change the offering, how quickly to go to market, how quickly to teach your people how to talk to clients, how to close deals, how to follow up.
how to build better products, to get extra value to product. So I think there is a lot of worries, is thousands and thousands of worries. So I think…
the hardest moments almost every day. It’s really up to you how hard the day is, you can just be relaxed and be satisfied with what you do or you put yourself into a very difficult situation.
That’s up to us farmers to take the easy path and just do regular stuff or just to say, hey, why we don’t actually push ourselves? Why we just change things constantly? Why don’t you learn something new today and apply the knowledge to your specific industry? And that’s how you…
Federico Ramallo (17:37) Right.
Tom (17:45) you can win big. It’s painful, it hurts, extremely hurts, right? But I think the biggest regret in entrepreneurial journey is that you might regret that you haven’t tried harder. That’s probably the hardest thing, just keep trying harder every day.
And I mean really hard. I mean to take calls with clients or…
build something very boring but like really hard, try hard. know, switching between tasks, know, learning, talking to clients, getting new employees, hard-fired employees who don’t perform. All these things are extremely hard, You to be fast, quick, you know, improvements. Not small ones, big ones, you know, setting up the goals.
going after them and execute. I think there’s thousands of hard moments I had. I see them actually as opportunities to build better product. I love the team, they used to be… He’s still playing when he’s very old. NHL player, Jarmir Jagre.
he said one very important thing, you we go through, as entrepreneurs, go through a very hard moment.
And we think that’s just happening just to us, right? What is actually happening to all of us, even to our competitors, right? And if you know how to overcome the hard moments, but that there are other people, you are a winner. So that’s how I see these things.
Federico Ramallo (19:28) Right,
very interesting.
What advice would you give founders? You you’ve been, you created multiple companies, you’ve been, you know, operating as founder for many years. What advice would you give to new founders and what things should they do and what things should they avoid?
Tom (19:49) to avoid not to make out. ⁓
Federico Ramallo (19:52) Hahaha
Tom (19:58) I would make, you know, I’m a very practical guy, so without a video I would literally make at least 500 tasks. 500 tasks. And just go after them. Set up, like literally, small things like set up a company. Buy a domain or go there. Build a website, the first thing. Make amazing product. Just, I it’s just a service.
Start blogging about it, get a LinkedIn profile, start writing a post on LinkedIn, make videos with other websites, write about a product on their website, get an engagement letter now.
get a Facebook account instead of a Stripe. So I would build thousands of little tasks and just get them done as soon as possible. And there’s one very simple rule. It’s, I would call it money cash hunt. So you make decisions based on what gives you money first.
Very simple, I 500 emails, but I have a missed call, text, or SMS, hey, I’m gonna pay $6000, $7000 for your service. So what’s easier, to go 500 emails and try to figure out what should be done, or just call this guy and get $7000 in.
So I would build a rule where have money first, always money first. Or if you can change the engagement leather the way the clients ask you to do so you can sign it and pay, do it. If you can get pay off more clients because you can change one single feature or fix a bug.
So always go after money, money, money first. So that’s probably a rule. It always worked for me. And we built cash flow positive companies. All my companies were always cash flow positive.
all the SaaS companies. I was in the telecom business, we built multiple companies in Southeast Asia, sold a few, got a few, closed a few, but mostly the contract and the client was very important, and it’s still very important. That’s the rule how we all operate in the company. Actually, at the end of the day, we built the business for…
for clients.
Federico Ramallo (22:39) Client first, cash flow first.
Tom (22:42) Catch ball first, always, always go first. That’s the rule of number one.
Federico Ramallo (22:47) Interesting. What do you want to build next in following years?
Tom (22:51) You know what, I can see that Equistrack will become, obviously not necessarily marketplace, but a platform where you can exchange stocks, private stocks.
So the price structure for private market, that’s what you want to do. The market is not willing to quit. And I don’t think it’s because of that.
money in
But basically there’s no single source of truth of truth pricing where you as a buyer or seller can understand, know, okay, I own XYZ.ai, Been working for this company five years. It was actually the bank of my stock as I’m doing, right? So in case I want to liquidate.
liquidate the stocks.
we want to be the platform which actually tells the price. So that’s our goal. Obviously, we will keep.
managing the stocks for clients. We’re going to help with all these points, all the valuations by them.
I think the stock price is more important than the liquidity. First liquidity and then stock price. That’s what a lot of platforms are trying to explain. if there is no price, there is no trade. So the price comes before liquidity. So that’s what we like to focus on.
Federico Ramallo (24:24) Very interesting.
Yeah, sounds interesting and looking forward to see it, you know, become a reality.
Tom (24:31) Yeah, definitely. We have a big feature going to launch within a weeks. We will process all the unique ones over our real-time valuation. we will do roughly $6- $7 trillion asset value in real time, a value of the asset in real time.
So that’s what we want to achieve in couple of months,
Federico Ramallo (25:04) Right.
That’s great. ⁓ And where can people reach out to you and to your companies?
Tom (25:06) Yeah.
The company? Yeah, yeah,
they can which, you know, I was always very transpired with my email address. It’s tom at equista.com. You can definitely leave the email address in the description.
Federico Ramallo (25:25) Bye.
Yeah.
Tom (25:34) happy to chat about product, fund raise, our product, anything, hires, happy to support people. Thank you very much.
Federico Ramallo (25:49) Great,
great. Yeah, we’re running out of time, but I truly appreciate it you being here today. Any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Tom (25:59) Yeah, just never give up guys. It’s hard, it’s lonely out there, but you have to do everything to succeed. Never give up. That’s the partner journey. So we chose this adventurous journey. So, yeah, good luck. Thank you for everything.
Federico Ramallo (26:19) Great.
Thank you, Tom, for being here today.