Beneath the Surface
Matt Milner: Main Street’s New Gateway into Wall Street’s Playground
July 8, 2025 • 5 minute, 19 second read
“Private equity is the intersection where ambition meets expertise, driving companies not just to evolve but to transform.”
~ David M. Rubenstein
July 8, 2025 — Here’s what we believe about the government:
It does the most good by just getting out of the way.
So it might come as a surprise that we’re so supportive of a new government initiative.
Today I’ll get you up to speed on what’s happening here…
Then I’ll explain how it could potentially help you double your money in about two years.
For close to one hundred years, the U.S. government made it illegal for ordinary investors to invest in pre-IPO startups — in other words, companies that weren’t public.
Unless you were a wealthy accredited investor (net worth of at least $1 million, or annual salary of $200,000), you could only invest in publicly-traded stocks and bonds.
This forced ordinary investors to miss out on big gains. According to Cambridge Associates, a financial advisor with clients including the Rockefeller Family and the Bill Gates Foundation, private startups have delivered annual returns of 55% over the last twenty-five years.
That’s five, six, seven times higher than the average returns of stocks. And it’s enough to double your money every two years or so.
Was the U.S. government trying to prevent you from making money? Probably not. In the most generous interpretation of its actions, it was probably trying to protect you.
But this kind of paternalistic policy makes our blood boil! We can go to war. We can gamble. But the government made it illegal for us to invest in what’s been the best-performing asset class.
We were thrilled when the laws around pre-IPO investing started changing about ten years ago.
This is why we started Crowdability: to help ordinary investors navigate and profit from the world of startup investing.
Unfortunately, certain kinds of pre-IPO investing are still off-limits today. And even when they’re not off-limits, they’re so off the beaten path that only the most well-informed investors (including you, a Crowdability reader) could hope to take advantage of them.
For example, if you’re not an accredited investor, and you’re not a reader of Crowdability, how can you learn how to get exposure to the most important (and potentially most profitable) companies of our generation — SpaceX, OpenAI, Anduril, etc.?
But there’s good news here:
There’s a new Sheriff in town…
Continued Below…
Special Opportunity:
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During the Trump 1.0 era, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) tried to make it easier for ordinary individuals to invest in the private markets. But the Biden administration reversed those efforts.
Now, bigger changes are afoot.
Shortly after being re-elected, Trump installed an interim SEC commissioner named Mark Uyeda. In late February 2025, Uyeda gave a speech. Here’s a key piece of it:
“If an individual believes that the risk is appropriate and is protected against fraud, then our regulatory regime should not deny such individual a source of potential wealth accumulation and portfolio diversification. Investor protection cannot be achieved through paternalistic policies.”
In other words, the government shouldn’t be preventing you from lowering your risk and making more money!
Uyeda said we should find new ways to open up the private markets to all. For example, what if you could qualify as accredited by passing an investor test? Or what if the SEC encouraged the creation of private market funds that traded like stocks?
In April, Paul Atkins was sworn in as the new Chairman of the SEC. He’s cut from the same cloth as Uyeda. That’s why, based on his “green light,” investment products are now emerging that give ordinary investors access to the private markets.
For example:
- Mutual fund giant Vanguard announced a private-equity fund in partnership with Blackstone and Wellington Management.
- A major 401(k) provider called Empower reported that some of its retirement plans will soon be able to offer private startup investments.
- Coatue is launching a public/private tech fund for ordinary investors, and KKR and Capital Group are forming various public/private funds for individual investors.
This is great news, right? You’ll finally be able to get full access to the private markets.
Not so fast.
Some of these opportunities might turn out to be solid investments for you.
But at the moment, they have some hair on them. For example, the minimum investment for the Coatue fund is expected to be $50,000. And the fees are expected to be very high.
That said, it’s clear that the SEC is getting serious about leveling the playing field.
Perhaps one day soon you’ll be able to qualify as accredited simply by passing a test you take at Crowdability. At that point, the entire world of investments would be open up to you — and you’d have access to a new world of profits.
To stay current on new developments in this arena, be sure to keep reading these articles.
In the meantime, we’ll keep bringing you private-market profit opportunities that everyone can get exposure to.
Happy investing.
Best Regards,
Founder Crowdability.com and Grey Swan
P.S. From Addison: Paid members, please join us for Grey Swan Live! with Matt Milner this Thursday, July 10 at 11 a.m. ET.
We’ll introduce you to Matt more formally and discuss several of the private offerings we’ve emailed you about in the past several weeks. You may recall having read about Matt’s back door offerings for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Starlink and xAi offerings? If you’re
With both private credit and private equity markets gaining pop trend status in the investment markets, we’ll dig deeper into private placements. We’ll explore the new opportunities being offered to individual investors in this environment and uncover the pitfalls and sand traps to look out for as the market opens up.
Join Matt Milner,nd I on Grey Swan Live! Thursday, July 10 at 11 a.m. ET.
Your thoughts? Please send them here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com
