Anyone else feel like people are kind of losing their minds over pre-IPO / SPVs lately?

I don’t know if it’s just my corner of the internet, but it feels like everyone suddenly needs exposure to private tech right now.

Not in a casual “this is interesting” way. More like: “I will pay whatever it takes to get in.”

The thing that really broke my brain recently was the VCX (Fundrise Innovation Fund) IPO.

The NAV is at $19. That's the book holding value of all its private holdings like SpaceX, Anthropic, Databricks anchored to their most recent tender or round–basically where you'd buy them at in the secondary market. A small premium might make sense–like 1.25x. Then it goes crazy and trades to $500, basically >25x. I shorted it that day but that's another story. It's absolutely nuts to try to buy into VCX as your method of proxy-buying these companies. I think there's a better way through SPV but maybe wait a little bit on those too.

Right now I feel there's a lot of pent up desire to invest in the current generational tech companies. By the time you get in at IPO on something like SpaceX (1.75 tril), you're getting average results. Like–yes–I can see the argument it's a 5T in 10-20 years but it's going to be volatile and it's going to be market beta type of returns, or slightly better. I got into an SPV 2 years ago at $200 bil and I'm going to be cashing out some of it for 4-6x returns. Nobody is talking about these opportunities out there.

I've personally gone the rabbit hole in the last 24 months and invested in 24 different companies, almost of the leading names by market cap(all except OpenAI and ByteDance, basically). I think the time to invest in these mega-corns is basically over, you're now aiming for a 2x at IPO at the very very best and that's if you're excellent with your hedging/exits. Now is the time to familiarize yourself with pre-IPO and build relationships and look for the next openAI/Anthropic/Anduril/SpaceX before they become either impossible to acquire or over-valued.

I got super deep and signed up to all the major secondary brokers–EquityZen, Hiive, Nasdaq Private Market, Forge Global, Upmarket, MicroVentures, Augment, AngelList. I signed up to pre-IPO research sites like Contrary and Sacra and a bazillion tech substacks. I wrote a small guide to Pre-IPO called "Adventures in Private Investing" that you'll have to search my profile for if you're interested.

There's definitely a lot of risk like illiquidity but no mark-to-market is actually kind of nice when the market is currently tanking over uncertainty in the Strait of Hormuz. I think this is the next great frontier of investing in the next 2-5 years, if you know what you're doing. What do you guys, am I crazy?