Retail investors historically missed out on a large portion of value creation in private markets because venture investing has typically been restricted - high minimums, long lock-ups and closed funds limited access. That dynamic, according to Willy Lee, a principal at Neostellar (NASDAQ: NSLR), is shifting as more public vehicles offer exposure to late-stage private companies.
Lee told Investing.com this week that substantive company growth and value creation now frequently occur well before a public listing. Venture as an asset class, he argued, has often been structured in a way that leaves ordinary public investors "increasingly forced to sit on the sidelines through much of their growth."
He pointed to SpaceX as an extreme illustration of the trend, noting that public-market investors waited more than 20 years for shares to become available on the Nasdaq - by which point the company had already reached a valuation of $1.77 trillion. "With Anthropic, OpenAI and others following a similar path, many investors may not get their first opportunity to participate until these companies are already the size of major S&P 100 businesses," Lee said.
Lee emphasized that a delayed public debut does not eliminate meaningful upside after an IPO, but it alters the nature of the opportunity. He contrasted the current environment with earlier windows of public access, stating it is very different from being able to invest in Google in 2004 at $23 billion.
Citing a Q3 2025 PitchBook report, Lee said that the profile of tech companies coming to market has shifted. The average technology company going public recorded $831 million in revenue, four companies had already exceeded $1 billion in revenue, and 25% of newly public technology firms were profitable - more than twice the share observed in 2021. At the same time, the median revenue multiple contracted from 17x in 2021 to 4x, a change that Lee interprets as evidence that companies are being asked to remain private longer and prove more before opening to public investors.
On the current surge of demand for private AI companies, Lee acknowledged that some valuations can look expensive when compared to commercial traction. He said investors in next-generation AI labs are, in many cases, underwriting technological progress rather than established revenue streams.
Nevertheless, Lee maintained that real growth is occurring within private markets. He noted that leading AI-native companies are posting high growth rates from significantly larger revenue bases than the enterprise software unicorns of 2021.
Lee expects retail access to private markets to continue expanding, as a growing number of publicly traded vehicles pursue a wider array of private-market strategies. He observed that when Neostellar launched its platform in 2011, it was among very few publicly traded vehicles focused on providing retail exposure to private companies. Today, he said, more publicly accessible vehicles are operating across a broader range of strategies.
At the same time, Lee stressed that Neostellar’s strategy differs from some peers. The firm aims to identify high-potential businesses "before they achieve broad recognition and associated scale." According to Lee, that approach has been employed with companies including WHOOP, CoreWeave and Palantir. He argued that finding such businesses earlier can enable differentiated sourcing and underwriting, creating the potential for meaningful long-term value for shareholders seeking venture-like exposure.
In Lee’s framing, the combination of longer private lifecycles for companies, expanding public vehicles that offer private-market access, and concentrated growth inside the private market is reshaping how and when retail investors can participate in major technology winners.