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).

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aliljet 21 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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nradov 12 hours ago | parent [-]

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

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bix6 3 hours ago | parent [-]

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

	▲	lotsofpulp 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		“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.