Private Placement 2.0 Recommendation

The great thing about investing in the early stages of a company?

The price, of course. You usually get a very low price. Which makes sense. After all, you’re taking on more risk by investing in young companies.

But there’s the other side of the coin.

It can take five to 10 years before the company cashes out its shares – either through an IPO or being bought out.

You have to be patient.

Some investors have no problem with that.

But if you mind the wait – and I can see why you might – then you’re going to love our pre-IPO fund.

It’s an exclusive opportunity to invest in mature or late-stage startups poised to potentially go public in the next 12 to 36 months. By the way, with an IPO looming, these companies are usually referred to as “pre-IPO.”

It’s something we’ve done before.

Two years ago, with the cooperation of our friends at MicroVentures, we offered a pre-IPO opportunity for the first time to our Startup Investor members.

Our aim: to give members outsized returns in a relatively short period of time. And starting out, we were cautiously optimistic.

Granted, the shares are a little more expensive. But these companies are very close to going public. So the kind of liquidity event we hope for in all our startup investments – an IPO, preferably – is much more predictable.

Another big plus: This recommendation offers instant diversification across seven to 10 different companies.

You’ll be investing in extremely well-run and efficient startups with well-known brands and big upsides while getting in at prices that still offer the possibility of significant discounts compared to an IPO price.

What we didn’t know when arranging our first pre-IPO fund was which startups would comprise the fund.

Of course, there were startups we had our eyes on. But you never know exactly what’s going to be available until the fund is closed.

Fortunately, we knew our colleagues over at MicroVentures regularly got access to some of the most successful and fast-growing later-stage startups.

We liked the way they evaluated the potential upside of these startups. And they promised to let us help them choose the very best ones they got access to.

So there were good reasons for our being “cautiously optimistic.”

As it turns out though, the fund has exceeded our expectations. In fact, it’s one of the finest pre-IPO funds we’ve ever seen.

MicroVentures brought us well-known brand companies we’ve long admired like Instacart, Lyft, Spotify, Dropbox and Pinterest.

With those companies in the fold, our caution quickly turned into curiosity as to just how big the returns would be for our members who invested.

We don’t have the final answer yet. But things couldn’t be looking better so far…

  • Instacart, the baby of the group, is now valuated at $2 billion.
  • Lyft has reached a $5.5 billion valuation.
  • Spotify is now worth $8.5 billion.
  • Dropbox is at $10 billion.
  • Pinterest has hit $11 billion.

Our recommendations are on track to deliver an outsized return to our subscribers in the years ahead.

Given our success with the first fund and a multitude of requests from our subscribers to do another similar fund, we again went to MicroVentures and asked if it was interested.

When the folks there said yes, we asked if there was anything different this time around that we should know about.

Their answer was very interesting.

They said more companies than ever were remaining private for extended periods… and that the number of outstanding mature startups to choose from has never been better.

Naturally, that was music to our ears. So we went to work.

From dozens upon dozens of companies, we developed a list of our top 15 choices.

Each has the big profit potential we look for along with the requisite level of safety. For us, that means the unit’s economics have to make sense. For example, the cost of customer acquisition must be significantly lower than the lifetime value of a customer.

Now, we’re not going to get into all the technical aspects of how we analyze them. Suffice it to say, it takes a lot of work.

But it pays off. Our in-depth evaluation of the numbers behind growing businesses led us to put some amazing startups into our fund two years ago.

And I see no reason why this new fund shouldn’t do as well – if not better. As I’ve said, we’ve identified 15 outstanding candidates.

There’s no guarantee we’ll get them. But we did a pretty good job in our last fund getting the startups we targeted.

So we’re confident that our “Private Placement 2.0” fund will also be a big winner for you.

Without divulging the names of the companies (The SEC would have a problem with that!), I can still describe them to you. Here are some of the top-shelf startups we’re looking at…

  • The next social media juggernaut that became the fastest-growing social network in 2015: One in five Americans is now using its product.
  • A genome company that analyzes your genetic code and tells you what diseases you may be susceptible to: The company recently hit the 1 million mark for customers.
  • The fastest-growing automated investment company: It already has $1.4 billion in assets in tax-efficient personal portfolios for 65,000 customers.
  • A certain software company: This one has grown its customer base from 16,000 in 2014 to 2.7 million today.
  • An online retail delivery company: It just hit 1 million monthly users. It offers a monthly subscription model – like Amazon Prime or Netflix – that’s proven to deliver steadily growing profits.
  • A huge new media company: It’s destroying traditional media sources with nearly three times the monthly viewership of The Washington Post.
  • A digital information company that’s exploding in use: It already has 85 million users in 188 countries. And it just got a significant investment from both Dell and Intel.
  • The company 11 venture capital funds are fighting to invest in: It just doubled its revenue in a very short period.

The Deal

You’ll be buying into a basket of about seven to 10 startups. It’s like a mutual fund of startups, giving you instant diversification.

But this is no boring mutual fund with little upside potential. Rather, it’s a grouping of the most promising companies that AREN’T available on the public markets.

I’ve made arrangements with MicroVentures to offer this fund – called EI Fund IV LLC – exclusively to you as a subscriber to Startup Investor.

My partner over at MicroVentures, CEO Bill Clark, assures me that nobody else will be allowed to invest in this fund.

You’ll be given an exclusive link identifying yourself as a subscriber to our Startup Investor service. And you can participate with as little as $10,000.

By the way, prior to MicroVentures, Bill helped manage a billion-dollar portfolio of small business accounts as a credit risk manager.

I’ve gotten to know Bill and the MicroVentures team while setting up our first exclusive fund. These guys know what they’re doing.

For example, in the past they were able to get pre-IPO shares in top-line companies like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.

You can’t ask for more than that.

There’s no time to waste. Some of these companies are likely to IPO as early as six months out.

How to Invest

For starters, you need to contact MicroVentures by clicking right here.

It will bring you to our Landing Page where you will see an orange “Sign Up” box. It looks like this:

Go ahead and click on it.

Next, you’ll see a short questionnaire under the heading, “Sign Up as an Investor,” where you’ll put in your contact information.

At this point, you’re making no commitment to join the fund or make an investment.

Your information will be conveyed to MicroVenture’s Investor Relations Associates so that, when the company gets back to you, it will have some basic information about you.

Now click on the orange “Continue” box.

Next, you’ll see some questions to ascertain whether you’re an accredited investor. You have to qualify as an accredited investor to join the fund. That means either having:

A) Annual income of $200,000 or more for the last two years (or $300,000 when combined with your spouse)

B) A net worth of more than $1 million (not including your primary home).

Check one of the four boxes and click “Continue.”

All you have to do now is put in your home country, state and the best phone number to reach you.

This page also lists these four documents…

I suggest you click on each one to read them all. I also suggest you print them out for future reference.

And, if you can, save them to your computer, too.

When you’re done, click the orange “Complete Registration” box.

Next you’ll see questions on your annual expenses and income, net worth and educational level. Answer these questions only if you wish to. They’re optional.

Your information should enter MicroVenture’s system overnight. You’ll be contacted the following day by one of MicroVenture’s Investor Relations Associates.

You’ll also need at least $10,000 to invest.

Then, when you actually make your investment, you’ll be required to provide some documentation regarding your wealth.

This could be in the form of tax documents, banking statements or paystubs.

I’ve also made it possible for you to participate with a simple letter from your broker or CPA indicating that you qualify.

After that, a live person will contact you to discuss all the details of your investment.

Then there will be a couple of forms to sign. Which can be done easily online.

Once you complete all these steps, you can make your investment through the online website.

If and when an IPO event occurs, the appropriate funds will be distributed to you. However, you’ll also have the option of staying invested via public shares for as long as you want.

And you’ll be able to go to the website we’ve set up for your deal to track what’s going on with the investments whenever you want.

This is a special opportunity. So I hope you take advantage of it. As a reminder, we take no compensation from the companies we work with, including MicroVentures. Our service is 100% independent.

Deal Summary:

Minimum Investment: $10,000
Amount Being Raised: Open-ended
Number of Holdings: About seven to 10
Maximum Number of Investors in the Fund: 99
Liquidity: Cash-out opportunity only after a liquidity event like an IPO or buyout
Post-IPO Waiting Period: 180 days.

Invest early and well,

Andy

Andy Gordon

Andy Gordon

I made my chops as an entrepreneur and investor with over 30 years of experience at building wealth for myself and others. I graduated from the London School of Economics a year after the bicentennial. By the way, this is the same school that produced 34 heads of state including John F. Kennedy… and another 18 Nobel Laureates…

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