Investing Guides

How to think about deploying a specific amount - the constraints that matter before product selection, and where private markets fit.

Start with constraints, not products

The most common mistake with a lump sum is starting from a product list. Liquidity needs, tolerance for total loss, eligibility and what is already covered elsewhere eliminate most options before you ever compare a provider.

How to use this section

There are 7 pages in this section. They are written to be read individually rather than in sequence - each one answers a specific question, and the internal links inside them will take you to whatever comes next for your situation.

If you are early in your research, start with the broadest page here and follow the links outward. If you already know what you are looking for, the list above is ordered so the most-used pages appear first. Every page in this section links back to the fund directory and the company index, so you can always get from a concept to the providers that implement it.

What this section will not tell you

None of these pages recommend a specific investment, and none of them assess whether something suits your circumstances. That is not a hedge - it is a description of what an independent comparison site can honestly do. We can map the routes, explain the structures, quantify the costs and name the risks. Deciding whether any of it belongs in your portfolio requires knowledge of your finances, tax position and obligations that we do not have.

Where the honest answer to a question is that no good option exists for a particular investor, these pages say so. That is the part most content in this category leaves out, because there is no commission in it.

A note on how private markets have changed

The reason this category exists at all is a structural shift in when companies list. A generation ago a successful technology business went public within a few years of founding, and ordinary investors captured most of its growth on a regulated exchange with audited disclosure. That is no longer how it works.

Companies now stay private for a decade or longer, funded by large late-stage rounds from institutions rather than by public offerings. By the time a listing arrives, a substantial share of the value creation has already happened - and it happened in a market most people cannot access, with none of the disclosure that public markets require.

Everything on this site follows from that shift. The demand for pre-IPO access is real, the routes that have emerged to meet it are genuine but uneven in quality and cost, and the information asymmetry between the people selling access and the people buying it is wider than in any regulated market. A comparison layer is useful precisely because the underlying market is opaque.

It also explains why we are so insistent about eligibility and sizing. The same shift that created the opportunity created a marketing industry around it, and that industry has every incentive to understate how illiquid, concentrated and information-poor these positions are.

Why we built this the way we did

Most content about pre-IPO investing is produced by people selling access to it. That is not a criticism of any individual provider - it is a structural fact about who has an incentive to write. The consequence is a body of material that is uniformly optimistic, quiet about fees, and silent on the question of whether a reader should participate at all.

We built this section on the opposite premise. Every page states costs in full, including the spread between secondary price and last primary round that almost never appears on a fee schedule. Every page names the eligibility gate that will exclude most readers before anything else matters. And every page is willing to conclude that the right action is to do nothing, which is an answer no commission-funded content can give.

The commercial model is disclosed rather than hidden: some providers pay us a referral fee, that is how the research stays free, and it does not affect what appears or in what order. Providers that pay us nothing are covered identically. You can verify that claim by checking whether the pages criticise paying providers - they do.

What good research in this market looks like

If you read anything else about this asset class, four tests separate the useful from the promotional, and they apply to us as much as to anyone.

• Does it quantify the fee stack? Not the headline rate - the total across a realistic hold, including carry and any embedded spread.
• Does it state what instrument you receive? The underlying share, a unit in a vehicle, and shares of a fund are different things with different rights.
• Does it disclose commercial relationships? And can you check whether the disclosure is real by finding criticism of a paying partner?
• Is it willing to say no? Content that always concludes with a reason to invest is advertising, whatever it calls itself.

Research that fails those tests is not necessarily wrong. It is just incomplete in a predictable direction, and the missing parts are the ones that cost money.

How this section fits the rest of the site

PreIpoFunds is organised around a single question: how does money actually reach a private company, and what does that route cost you. Four sections answer different parts of it, and this one is a piece of that structure rather than a standalone resource.

The fund directory covers the providers - who they serve, what you hold, and what the fee stack looks like across a realistic holding period. The company index covers the underlying businesses and which providers can reach each one. The guides explain the structures and the rules that gate them. The tools let you put numbers to the decision before committing.

Most readers arrive from a search for one specific thing - a company name, a platform review, a jurisdiction. The cross-links inside each page are there so that a narrow entry point leads to the wider context rather than a dead end, because in this market the narrow question is almost never the one that decides the outcome.

Who this section is written for

We write for people making an actual allocation decision, not for browsers. That means the pages assume you will act on what you read and are correspondingly careful: costs are quantified rather than described, eligibility gates are named explicitly, and risks appear before conclusions rather than in a footer.

It also means we do not write to a word count or optimise for engagement. Where a question has a short answer, the page gives the short answer. Where the honest response is that a route does not exist for a particular investor, the page says so and suggests what does. Readers making real decisions want to be told when to stop, and that is the part most content in this category omits.

If you want the conclusion without the reading, tell us your constraints on the get matched page and we will shortlist what can actually serve you - including telling you when the answer is nothing.

Keeping this section current

Private markets change faster than most content is maintained. Providers change fees and minimums, companies file and list, and platforms gain and lose the ability to source particular names. We review this section on a schedule and update on event, and we mark figures that require verification rather than presenting stale numbers as current.

If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us through the contact page. Corrections are made quickly and material changes are noted.