A Structural Shift in Where Value is Created
One of the most consequential changes in modern markets is the simple fact that companies are staying private for far longer than they once did. In previous decades, public investors could participate in the bulk of a great company's growth simply by buying shares after an early IPO. Today, that window has narrowed dramatically. By the time a company hits the public exchanges, an enormous portion of its value creation has already occurred behind closed doors, available only to venture capital firms, private equity funds, and accredited insiders.
This dynamic creates a real problem for ordinary investors and for traditional public-market funds: by relying exclusively on stocks already listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ, they systematically miss the most explosive phase of growth. The solution that is now emerging is to bring private equity exposure directly into the ETF wrapper, blending the structure and liquidity of an exchange-traded fund with the upside potential of pre-IPO ownership.
The Venture Capital Lens Applied to Public Markets
The most compelling way to think about modern equity investing is through what can be called a "VC lens." Rather than evaluating stocks the way a typical mutual fund analyst might — focusing on quarterly earnings, dividend yields, and short-term price targets — this approach examines public companies the way a venture capitalist would evaluate a startup. The question is no longer "is this stock cheap today?" but "is this an entrepreneurial enterprise capable of compounding value over a decade or more?"
This philosophy can be formalized into what is sometimes called an entrepreneur factor — a proprietary model built around eight attributes, both qualitative and quantitative. Every holding must pass through this strict filter to qualify. The result of applying this factor consistently is an entrepreneur index with a twenty-year track record that has outperformed almost every major benchmark over that period. It is essentially an eight-point checklist that forces discipline: if a company doesn't meet the criteria, it isn't bought, no matter how popular it has become.
This same approach explains why every member of the so-called Magnificent 7 was a holding very early in its lifecycle. Nvidia, for example, was on the radar back in 2005, when it was a five-dollar stock making backup cameras for cars — long before anyone associated it with AI or trillion-dollar market capitalizations. Identifying entrepreneurial DNA early is the whole game.
SpaceX as the Next Magnificent Holding
When the VC lens is applied to the universe of private companies, one name stands out above all others: SpaceX. With strong conviction, it is reasonable to call SpaceX not just the next member of the Magnificent 7, but potentially the elite of an expanded Magnificent 8. A fund built on this thesis can justify holding as much as 20% of its assets in a single private position because the upside potential and competitive moat are so extraordinary.
Currently, SpaceX is marked at a valuation of around 1.4 trillion dollars. When it eventually goes public — with expectations centered on a June timeline — the IPO is likely to price somewhere between 1.75 and 2 trillion dollars. That would make it the largest IPO in U.S. history, and very likely the largest IPO on the planet. Investors who already own private shares through an ETF structure have already benefited from the markups, and additional markups will follow as more market data justifies them.
The Index Inclusion Catalyst
The financial mechanics around a SpaceX listing are nearly as interesting as the company itself. There are credible rumors of a fast-track inclusion into the NASDAQ, and even more significantly, whispers of expedited entry into the S&P 500. If SpaceX enters the S&P 500 at a valuation close to where Tesla currently trades — say 1.5 trillion dollars — it would represent roughly a 2% weight in the index.
That is enormous. Between 15 and 20 trillion dollars of passive money tracks the S&P 500. A 2% allocation translates into 300 to 400 billion dollars of forced buying from index funds that have no choice but to purchase every constituent. This mechanical demand would help mitigate any selling pressure from early investors taking profits and would essentially guarantee a powerful tailwind at launch. Every fund manager mimicking the S&P 500 or NASDAQ has to buy every member of that index, so inclusion is effectively a buy order written across the entire passive investing universe.
Technology Conviction and the Role of AI
A fund built around the entrepreneur factor naturally ends up heavily weighted toward technology. Holdings like Nvidia and Meta sit alongside the SpaceX position because they continue to demonstrate the same characteristics that made them successful in the first place. There is still substantial room for these companies to run, and the conviction is high that betting on enduring innovation pays off over multi-year horizons.
Artificial intelligence is also playing an increasingly central role in how this kind of investing actually gets done. While the entrepreneur factor itself is proprietary, the underlying work — sifting through thousands of data points across hundreds of potential investments — is now augmented heavily by large language models and machine learning. AI makes the analysis more efficient without replacing the long-tested factor model that drives the ultimate decisions.
What This Means for Investors
The convergence of three trends — companies staying private longer, the rise of ETFs that can hold private equity, and the imminent listing of the largest IPO in history — represents a meaningful moment for retail and institutional investors alike. The opportunity is no longer just to buy great public companies; it is to gain pre-IPO exposure to the next generation of dominant enterprises through a liquid, exchange-traded vehicle.
If SpaceX performs the way the early Magnificent 7 holdings did, and if index inclusion arrives on the rumored fast track, the implications ripple far beyond a single ticker. They reshape what a diversified equity portfolio should look like in an era when the most valuable companies in the world spend a decade or more compounding outside the reach of traditional public-market investors.