somethinglikethat

In 2011, I pitched a top securities attorney in New York on democratizing investing. After hearing me list all of the ways I believed retail investors were disadvantaged by the financial system, he just looked at me and said: “Why would you bother with the little guy?” Today, 15 later, we’re listing the @fundrise Innovation Fund on the NYSE under the ticker $VCX. The financial system has a structural problem that most people can feel but few can name. The most valuable private technology companies are worth hundreds of billions, even over a trillion dollars, and they’ve never gone public. The wealth creation that used to flow through public markets—enabling everyone to participate—now happens behind a wall that excludes everyday investors. AI compounds the urgency. The companies building the most transformative technology in a generation are growing at rates we’ve never seen before, and the gap between who owns that growth and who benefits from it widens every quarter. We started working on the Fundrise Innovation Fund in 2021 to test whether a public venture capital fund could work. Over 100,000 investors now own a portfolio concentrated in the leading private AI and technology companies, making VCX one of the largest funds of its kind to ever list on a major exchange. No accredited investor requirement. Now available in any brokerage account. When that attorney asked me why I’d bother with the little guy, I told him: because they’re getting screwed! But I believe today marks another step in building a better financial system for the individual investor. Onward