For years, if we wanted our money to grow, we’d invest in the stock market.
And for years, this was fine. If a company mattered, it was public and we could buy its stock.
Everything else, including private companies, was behind a velvet rope.
This distinction between public and private felt clean, logical, permanent.
But now, quietly, the distinction has fallen apart.
Back When “Public” and “Private” Actually Meant Something
Matt Levine captured this idea perfectly in a recent edition of Money Stuff (paywall).
Within living memory, he wrote, there were “public companies,” which anyone could invest in, and “private companies,” which most people couldn’t.
Private companies weren’t a market. They were a mess!
- Some private companies were backed by venture capital.
- Others were “buyouts” owned by private equity firms.
- And still others were law firms, medical practices, or local hardware stores.
There was no common thread among them other than one thing: they weren’t public.
Public companies, on the other hand, were a coherent category. They filed the same SEC disclosures, traded on the same exchanges, and could all be owned through a single index fund.
You could say, “I’ll just buy the whole market.”
For many years, saying something like: “I’d like to invest in all the private companies, too” would have seemed absurd.
And yet — here we are.
Private Companies That Don’t Feel Very Private
Today, many of the world’s most important, fastest-growing companies have something in common: they’re private.
SpaceX is valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Stripe has thousands and thousands of private shareholders.
OpenAI, Databricks, Anthropic, Canva — each of them is massive, private, and central to the modern economy.
These companies raise capital frequently, provide liquidity to their shareholders, and are widely owned by major institutions.
They’re private in name — but in behavior, they’re public.
And this new state of affairs leads to a question that most of us haven’t faced before:
If we want our money to grow, shouldn’t we be investing in these private companies?
Growth Has Moved — And Now the Indexes Are Following
This recent shift toward the private markets isn’t theoretical. It’s happening in the real world. And now it’s being baked into the “plumbing” of the capital markets.
For example, earlier this year, MSCI, one of the most influential index providers, launched what it calls a “total equity benchmark.”
This benchmark combines public stocks with private equity. In fact, it allocates about 15% of the index to private markets. This is a big deal. For decades, the holy grail of investing was simple: buy a low-cost index fund that owns “the market.”
But now, MSCI is effectively saying the market has changed; now it includes private companies.
Morningstar is making the same point:
Its new Modern Market 100 Index doesn’t ask whether a company is public or private. It asks something far more relevant:
Does this company represent the modern economy?
If the answer is yes, it belongs in its new index.
That’s why, in the Modern Market 100 Index, you’ll find public giants like Nvidia and Microsoft sitting alongside private heavyweights like SpaceX, Stripe, and OpenAI.
They’re all in one basket because they all represent one modern market.
Why This Matters for Everyday Investors
This isn’t about academic definitions. It’s about where the biggest returns come from.
Today, companies are staying private longer and longer. They’re raising more and more money while they’re private. And they’re reaching enormous scale before their IPO.
As a result, more value is being created before a company ever reaches the public markets.
That’s why, if you only invest in public stocks, you’re investing after the most explosive growth has already happened.
This doesn’t mean public markets are broken. It just means they’re incomplete.
Private Startups Are Becoming Part of the Equity Market
The old mental model (public equals investable, private equals inaccessible) no longer holds.
A new category has emerged: private-is-the-new-public companies.
These private companies are large, liquid, widely owned by institutions — and now increasingly, they’re being indexed.
In other words, the equity market no longer lives entirely on stock exchanges.
Where Crowdability Fits In
Ever since we got started more than a decade ago, Crowdability’s mission has been simple:
We help everyday people learn about — and profit from — the private markets.
Because if the definition of “the market” is changing, portfolios need to change too.
In a world where the most important companies aren’t confined to the stock market, capturing the gains of the equity market means looking beyond tickers.
The private markets aren’t just a profitable niche for the insiders anymore. Now they’ve become part of the overall equity market.
And as it turns out, the private markets are where you can find the greatest growth.
Happy Investing
Best Regards,
Founder
Crowdability.com
