In investing, private is the new public
Recent changes in technology and regulation allow retail investors to participate in early stage growth opportunities. CAPVEE is here to help you navigate this new frontier.
Hello and welcome to CAPVEE - a new education and research service that focuses on private market investing.
As many of us have learned, the biggest growth and gains often happen before IPOs. It makes sense if you think about it from the entrepreneurs’ and VCs’ perspective - sell the company when the growth charts are at their steepest pitch and everyone wants a piece. That’s great for them, but less so for our retirement accounts. By the time these companies open themselves to public market investors, tons of value has already been juiced out.
Don’t believe us? Check out the chart below. IPOs lagged major indices throughout the past five years of raging bull markets.
Until recently, retail investors that want in on high-growth startups haven’t had any other options but to buy IPOs. Our collective tolerance for that is drying up fast, and the movement is reverberating throughout the entire public/private market ecosystem (see the Reading List below for more colorful explanations).
As the public markets become the domain of more mature, slower growing businesses, investors with a risk-on appetite for high growth seek access to earlier stage opportunities.
Over the past few years, technological and regulatory changes have opened up some access to private markets. Numerous equity crowdfunding platforms and secondary exchanges have emerged and offer investors a wide range of opportunities from small early stage startups to late stage growth companies to multi-family real estate to wine. As one might expect, not all of these deals are worth a place in investors’ portfolios. In fact, these risky assets require a specialized understanding and process.
We started CAPVEE because we see the private market investing trend growing quickly in scope and scale. Retail investors will gain greater access to private market deals and allocate a portion of their portfolios accordingly. Our goals are as follows:
Educate investors on how to invest in private companies.
Enable investors to discover opportunities
Analyze deals to help investors make better decisions
We believe our experience as both entrepreneurs and investors can help us serve as private market investing guides. Follow us to learn how to invest in private companies and use our proprietary rating and research process to make informed decisions.
Let’s conquer this new investing frontier together.
-Team CAPVEE
Reading List:
Dan Ives - WeWork is the Poster Child for What’s Failing in IPO Market
Fred Wilson - The Great Public Market Reckoning
Financial Times - IPO Failures Show the Market is Maturing