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Comment by aliljet | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Yep. I know several people who became accredited investors through one simple trick: they lied. No one actually checks.

And now they’ve thrown their legal rights away should any dispute arise. Wouldn’t recommend this strategy.

“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.

Is there a pure stripe fund though? What if I just want exposure to stripe and not the rest of their portfolio?

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.

> You still have to be an accredited investor

Which means that you have to be able to repeat after me “I am an accredited investor”, that’s the actual full list of requirements.

No, the actual full list of requirements is on the SEC website site.

I think they are trying to point out the seller may not be required to verify. Only ask.

Like the age check on logged out YouTube videos

No, those are not actual requirements.

Legally speaking that is not correct. Maybe in practice you can do that, but it opens you up to very real risk.

To your bog standard human being, trading Stripe stock has significant barriers vs trading a public stock.

What “very real risk”?

Not legal risk, certainly.

“Risk” in economic terms? Yeah that’s the whole purpose of claiming to be an accredited investor.

How exactly?

Robinhood just launched a new ventures vehicle and Stripe could be "supposedly" part of it. Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI),

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."

The easiest way? Angelist.

I’ve poked around – looks like it’s not enough to just declare you’re an accredited investor, but also prove it?

What evidence do I need to provide as a US investor: https://help.angellist.com/hc/en-us/articles/15569926884109-...

As a non-US investor: https://help.angellist.com/hc/en-us/articles/15570114297869-...

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