A few weeks ago, Larry Fink released his annual letter to investors.
As the CEO of asset-management firm BlackRock, Fink oversees more money than anyone on the planet — $14 trillion. So when he talks about the future of investing, it pays to listen.
His letter this year wasn’t just about markets and interest rates. It carried a deeper message, one that investors like you can’t afford to ignore.
Today, I’ll show you what Fink said, and reveal how to take advantage of it.
“How Much Do You Own?”
First, let’s cut to the chase with the big takeaway from Fink’s letter:
Building wealth in the future won’t just be about earning a paycheck. It will be tied to owning assets such as stocks, real estate, even infrastructure.
As Fink explained, since 1989, a dollar invested in the U.S. stock market has grown more than 15x more than the value of a dollar tied to wages. Now he believes the rise of AI will accelerate this trend. Simply put, most of our future economic growth will be captured by asset holders.
This new reality shifts how we need to think about money. The defining financial question of the future may not be, “How much do you make?” It could soon be, “How much do you own?”
The problem is, millions of Americans don’t own much at all. According to a Gallup survey from September 2025, nearly 40% of Americans don’t own stocks. And according to Wikipedia, the rate of U.S. homeownership since 2000 is going down, not up.
Fink’s Solution
Fink would like to see more people sharing in economic growth.
His strategy to do so is simple. Tap into the private markets.
In his 2025 letter, Fink argued that the traditional 60/40 portfolio of stocks/bonds is dead. “The future standard portfolio,” he said, “may look more like 50/30/20 — stocks, bonds, and private assets.”
As Fink noted, the assets that will define the future — data centers, ports, power grids, the world’s fastest-growing companies — all live in the private markets.
Bottom line: to build wealth, Fink is advising investors to turn to the private markets.
Here are three reasons we believe this is good advice…
Reason No. 1: Staying Private Longer
For starters, the private markets are where you’ll find most of today’s biggest companies.
According to market-intelligence platform CapIQ, 87% of U.S. companies with revenues greater than $100 million are privately held. In other words, the vast majority of sizable companies aren’t even on the stock market!
Furthermore, these companies are staying private for longer.
Take a look:
This chart shows the average number of years before a company IPOs. As you can see, in the 1980s, companies went public after about four years. By the early 2000s, that number had doubled to around eight years. Today, companies are staying private for twelve to sixteen years.
If companies are staying private longer, that means more of their growth is happening in the private market. It also means that more of their profits are going to private investors…
Reason No. 2: Returns are Going to Private Investors
To see what I mean, take a look at this chart:
This chart, compliments of venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, shows a major shift in the type of investor that’s capturing the biggest returns.
For each company (Apple, Amazon, etc.), the grey part of each bar chart reflects profits captured by stock-market investors. The orange shows profits captured by private investors.
For years, public investors (in grey) reaped the bulk of a company’s returns. For example, look at Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). When it went public in 1986, its early private investors could have cashed out for about 200x at the IPO. Not bad.
But after it went public, stock-market investors could have made far more than that. As of April 1, 2025, they could have made about 5,000x their money. That’s enough to turn $1,000 into $5 million.
Furthermore, prior to 2004, stock-market investors also did well in companies like Apple, Oracle, and Amazon. But look what’s been happening more recently:
Time and again, from Google to LinkedIn to Twitter, private-market investors made hundreds of times their money. Meanwhile, public-market investors made peanuts.
The takeaway here is simple: for a shot at the biggest returns today — the returns that can actually be life-changing — you need to invest while these companies are still private.
And if you happen to invest when these companies are at their very earliest stages, that’s even better. Let me show you…
Reason No. 3: Ground-floor Opportunities
One of the biggest and most exciting benefits to private-market investing is getting in on the ground floor. This is how you maximize your profit potential.
For example:
- In 2010, Uber was just an idea: tap your phone, get a ride. One of its earliest investors, First Round Capital, invested about half a million dollars at a valuation of around $5 million. When Uber went public in 2019, its stake turned into more than $2.5 billion.
- In 2009, Sequoia Capital invested in Airbnb at a valuation of around $20 million. Shares were roughly a penny each. When the company went public in 2020, it was worth around $47 billion. Those penny shares were now valued at $145 apiece.
- Then there’s investor Peter Thiel. Thiel invested $500,000 into Facebook in 2004. When the company IPO’d in 2012, his stake turned into more than $1 billion. That’s a 2,000x return.
Look to the Private Markets
Fink’s latest letter makes one thing clear: the key to building wealth today is to own assets.
Unfortunately, too few people currently have exposure to such assets.
That’s what we’re trying to change at Crowdability. We help ordinary people get ownership stakes in today’s highest-potential companies — while they’re still private.
You can browse private startups raising money right now on our Deals page. And when you’re ready to dive deeper, check out our premium-research service, Private Market Profits.
In the meantime, happy investing,
Editor
Crowdability.com
