The SpaceX Lesson

The SpaceX IPO is going to generate a lot of obvious takes.

People will argue about valuation. They will debate Elon. They will talk about Starlink, Mars, AI, defense contracts, launch cadence, governance, retail access, index inclusion, and whether the public market is once again willing to pay extraordinary prices for extraordinary ambition.

Fine. All of that matters.

But I think the biggest takeaway is simpler and more uncomfortable:

There are now three equity markets. And most of the value creation is happening before most people are allowed to participate.

For the AV community, this should feel familiar. The future is often built in private for a very long time before the public market gets a clean ticker symbol.

By the time a company like SpaceX becomes available to everyone, the venture investors, employees, founders, early believers, and late-stage private investors have probably already lived through the steepest part of the value-creation curve. The public buyer may still do well. Maybe very well. But they are usually buying after a tremendous amount of the compounding has already happened.

That is the point too few people are willing to say plainly.

The data backs this up. Global listed equity market capitalization was $125.71 trillion at year-end 2024, but global exchanges hosted only 1,133 IPOs that year, the lowest count in the World Federation of Exchanges’ five-year review window. At the same time, private markets are no longer a side room: closed-end private equity AUM is roughly $9 trillion-plus, venture capital AUM reached $3.1 trillion, and growth equity is roughly $1.6 trillion to $1.7 trillion.

Public markets are still the biggest pool by far. They are just no longer the only place where scaled equity value compounds.

The Three Equity Markets

Most investors still talk as if equities means public stocks.

That is outdated.

There are really three equity markets now.

The Advisor Problem

Here is where I am going to be blunt.

Many financial advisors are not built, trained, or incentivized to help you think across all three equity markets.

Their business model often works best when you stay in familiar, fee-generating categories: public stocks, bonds, model portfolios, and managed accounts. Charging a fee to put a client into index funds is easy and lucrative. It is also, in many cases, wildly overpriced.

That does not mean advisors are bad. A great advisor can be extremely valuable, especially around taxes, estate planning, risk management, behavior, and family decision-making.

But you should understand the incentive structure.

If your advisor earns more when your assets stay in their platform, they may not be naturally excited about helping you allocate to private investments they cannot manage, bill on, or understand deeply.

That is not conspiracy. That is just incentives.

Personally, I trust a well-run AI process more than a conflicted human process. Not because AI is magic. It is not. But because a good prompt can force the right questions: time horizon, net worth, liquidity needs, access, concentration risk, tax constraints, loss tolerance, and what you are actually trying to accomplish.

Then you can take that output and talk to smart people.

Talk to your advisor. Talk to private-market investors. Talk to founders. Talk to tax professionals. Talk to people who have lived through multiple cycles.

But do not outsource the architecture of your family’s balance sheet to someone whose incentives you have not examined.

The SpaceX Lesson

SpaceX did not become interesting on IPO day.

It became interesting over the last two decades, while it was private.

That is the lesson.

By the time public investors get access, much of the company-building, risk-taking, and value creation has already occurred. The IPO is not the beginning of the story. It is the moment the story becomes available to everyone else.

This is not just a SpaceX observation. The median age of U.S. IPO companies was 5 years in 1999. It reached 14 years in 2024 and was 12 years in 2025. For VC-backed IPOs specifically, the 2025 median time from first VC financing to IPO was a record 7.85 years. Companies are not merely waiting for a better window. The whole financing system now lets them mature privately.

That does not mean you should chase every private deal. In fact, that is a great way to get hurt. It also does not mean private marks are always right: in 2025, two-thirds of unicorn IPOs priced below their last private valuation. The public market is still the final valuation arbiter.

It means you should ask a better question:

What is my personal allocation across the three equity markets?

Not what is fashionable. Not what is on CNBC. Not what my advisor happens to sell. Not what my friends are bragging about. Not what I can get into this week.

Your allocation should be personal. It depends on your goals, age, time horizon, liquidity needs, tax situation, income stability, access, temperament, and family obligations.

A 32-year-old founder with stable income and a 25-year horizon can think differently than a 62-year-old with concentrated company stock and near-term spending needs.

A family office with deep tech access can think differently than a first-time accredited investor wiring into random SPVs.

A builder inside the AV ecosystem may have information, relationships, and pattern recognition that are real advantages. But those advantages still need structure.

How We Think About It

This is not financial advice. It is simply how my family office thinks about the problem after 40 years in technology, entrepreneurship, and venture investing.

We want public equity exposure to be cheap, broad, and boring.

We want late-stage private exposure to be diversified across roughly 20 high-quality companies, held for the long term, with real attention to access price, fees, structure, and liquidity.

We want venture exposure to be broad enough to respect the power law: 100-plus underlying companies, built over years, through managers who can actually get into the companies that matter.

And across all three buckets, we do not try to jump in and out.

Market timing sounds clever and usually behaves expensively. Transaction costs, taxes, bad timing, and emotional decision-making can quietly destroy returns. The goal is not to trade between segments. The goal is to build a long-term allocation you can actually hold.

What To Do Now

I built a prompt for this.

As a rough default, the research points toward public equities staying at the core. For a family-office or HNW equity sleeve, a sensible starting range could be often 65%-80% public equities, 10%-20% late-stage private, and 5%-10% early-stage venture. Move toward the private end only when the investor has a long horizon, real access, and enough liquidity to avoid becoming a forced seller.

Run it in Codex, Claude Code, ChatGPT, or whatever AI system you trust. It will interview you and help produce a one-page personal equity allocation across public equities, late-stage private companies, and early-stage venture.

Then pressure-test it.

Show it to your advisor. Show it to people who understand private markets. Show it to people who know your life and will tell you the truth.

The point is not to let AI manage your money.

The point is to force a better conversation.

Because the SpaceX IPO is not just a story about one company finally going public.

It is a reminder that the equity market has changed. The public market is still essential, but it is no longer the whole game.

There are three equity markets now.

If you are serious about long-term wealth creation, your plan should acknowledge all three.

Alumni Ventures and its personnel provide advice only to affiliated venture capital funds. Nothing in this communication is personalized advice for any recipient.