The public can absolutely participate in this by way of syndication deals. Those syndicates are what's covering up the true extent of ownership and they're essentially charging for access with their fees. It's oddly shady, poorly regulated, and more expensive than just being public, but everyone can ride this ride.
The general public absolutely cannot. You have to be an accredited investor or qualified purchaser; you need to have access; you have to pay carry & fees (maybe multiple, stacked middlemen).
The path to declaring yourself accredited is uniquely easy. Just say it. The whole space is deeply unregulated and unaudited. What makes it insane is that those middleman are making a small fortune exploiting this loophole protecting large companies from being forced to go public. The number is 2000 private investors. Rest assured, more than 2000 individuals have money in Stripe today. It's a total scam.
“Rights”. If you’re lying about accredited investor status, you definitely don’t have the resources to pursue your adversaries in civil litigation, much less actually collect on any judgment.
But they had the option of buying VOO or whatever broad market index the entire time, so I don’t see the need to protect people who feel the need to gamble.
No, that's not how the US legal system works. I don't endorse fraud (or dishonesty in general) but your claim that lying about being an accredited investor extinguishes all legal rights in a dispute is simply false and has no basis in law. Most rights would still be retained.
Not really. You still have to be an accredited investor AND financially savvy enough to have the awareness of what syndicate deals are and how to find them and participate.
Thank you for sharing this, I was unaware! It launches tomorrow.
This is the footnote regarding Stripe: "New deal incoming: RVI has entered a binding agreement to invest in Stripe, Inc. This investment is expected to close after RVI’s IPO, subject to meeting customary closing conditions. Note: This deal isn’t guaranteed to close."
