[sthomps]

I'm sure Scott is incredibly intelligent, and I have the utmost respect for A16Z, but this is a moronic, self-serving, bubble-mentality post.

Firstly, you seriously think that the middle class is being eradicated due to the fact that they can't invest in private market companies early enough? You believe that most of the middle class has their investable cash at the ready, but is being limited by IPO listings?

No one will argue that IPO times need to come down and we don't need overvalued companies bloating up the stock market. But you are making the presumption that the investable upside of private companies outweighs those that are available in the public market. I'll take 10 shares of BRK any day over some random Ponzi scheme tech startup, thx.

The average returns in the venture market underperform the S&P, which is not constrained to purchase. And the S&P is not exactly everyone's first choice. The issue is not access to private companies, it's access to 1) knowledge, 2) investable cash and then 3) comparable opportunities.

If the issue is that getting access, both on the private and public side, to liquidity sooner than we are currently seeing, I agree. But it has very little to do with the middle class. The title is just linkbait.

[muzz]

Moreover, he believes that individual middle class investors will be able to invest and compete for returns with venture professionals, whose returns as you point out are not even as good as S&P 500 index funds.