Access: The Most Underrated Asset in Investing
Access has become an investment advantage in its own right. Why the strongest opportunities are created long before they are widely available.
By Jura Capital
When investors discuss the drivers of long term returns, the conversation usually centres on asset allocation, market timing or stock selection. Far less attention is paid to the factor that often decides whether an investor can take part in an opportunity at all.
Access.
In today's market, access is no longer a matter of convenience. It has become an advantage in its own right. The strongest opportunities tend to emerge before they are widely available, and by the time an investment reaches the broader market a significant share of its value has usually already been created.
Institutional investors have understood this for decades. Family offices, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds have long allocated to private markets because they recognise that much of the world's value creation happens away from public exchanges.
The question is no longer whether private markets matter. The question is who gets access to them.
A note on where we sit. Jura Capital does not manage money and does not run a fund. We introduce qualified investors to private equity, asset backed income and alternative asset opportunities, and we provide the context needed to assess them properly. Our role is access, not custody.
The investable universe has moved
Many investors still assume public markets represent the majority of what can be owned. Increasingly they do not.
According to Morgan Stanley Private Markets, drawing on Capital IQ data to December 2024, there are roughly 17,200 private businesses generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, against around 4,060 public companies of the same size. Most of the corporate economy at meaningful scale now sits outside the exchange.
The universe has inverted
Companies with more than $100m annual revenue
Private businesses
Public companies
At the same time the listed universe has contracted. There were approximately 7,000 publicly listed US companies at the beginning of 2000. By the end of 2022 there were around 4,650.
The public pie is shrinking
US publicly listed companies
~7,000
Start of 2000
~4,650
End of 2022
The implication is straightforward. For an investor looking only at listed markets, the opportunity set is not simply smaller than it once was. It is a shrinking slice of a growing economy, and listing status now decides what an investor can even see.
Value is created before the listing
This is not only a question of where companies are registered. It is a question of where value is created.
Historically, public markets funded expansion. Businesses listed relatively early and public investors participated through most of the growth journey. In 1999, companies stayed private for an average of 4.5 years before going public. Today that average is 10.7 years, and the value created during those years accrues to private shareholders.
Morgan Stanley's comparison makes the point plainly. Amazon and Netflix listed more than twenty years ago after five years or less in private ownership, and created almost all of their value as public companies. Airbnb and Spotify each spent around twelve years private and generated the majority of their value before anyone could buy a share on an exchange.
Where the value is created
Years spent in private ownership before listing
Amazon and Netflix
5 years private, listed early, value created in the public markets
Airbnb and Spotify
12 years private, listed late, most value created before the IPO
Average time private: 4.5 years in 1999, 10.7 years today.
For public market investors, the IPO is increasingly the exit, not the entry.
This is a structural change in how capital forms, not a passing phase. The OECD has documented the same shift, noting that capital formation continues to move towards private markets and away from public listing.
Why access stayed institutional
Private markets were never reserved for institutions because institutions are better investors. They were institutional because participation required scale of capital, specialist expertise, established relationships and the capacity to run proper due diligence.
Pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds and family offices have treated private markets as a strategic component of a diversified portfolio for decades. The reasoning has been consistent. Private equity, private credit, infrastructure and alternative assets provide exposure to businesses and sectors that listed markets simply do not contain, alongside differentiated sources of return.
McKinsey's Global Private Markets Report continues to describe sustained institutional demand for private capital through changing conditions. Institutions are not allocating because private markets are fashionable. They allocate because breadth across public and private ownership tends to produce a better constructed portfolio.
None of those barriers were about merit. They were about capital, networks and diligence capacity.
The barrier is visibility, not appetite
One of the most common misconceptions about private markets is that investors are not interested. In reality, many qualified investors are never given the chance to evaluate them properly.
That is rarely a function of financial circumstances or risk tolerance. More often it is a function of information. Private investments sit within regulatory frameworks designed to protect investors, and those frameworks limit how opportunities can be communicated and to whom. Combine that with higher minimums and relationship led sourcing, and the result is an environment where a great many suitable investors simply never hear about opportunities professionals have been considering for years.
The imbalance is not in capability. It is in visibility.
Access, then, is about far more than securing an allocation. It is about qualified investors having sight of the opportunity, the structure behind it and the context needed to judge it. Without information, choice is theoretical. If you would like to see what is currently available and how it is structured, you can request access here.
Access as a portfolio input
Durable outcomes rarely come from a single exceptional investment. They come from disciplined construction: balancing asset classes, risk profiles, liquidity characteristics and sources of return.
Private markets can play a defined role within that framework, sitting alongside public equities and fixed income to provide diversification, exposure to sectors unavailable on exchange and returns driven by different economic factors.
| Listed markets | Private markets |
|---|---|
| Daily liquidity, continuous pricing | Defined horizons, valuation at intervals |
| Around 4,060 US companies above $100m revenue | Around 17,200 private businesses of that size |
| Opportunity available to anyone with an account | Opportunity dependent on access and eligibility |
| Value increasingly captured before listing | Value captured during the private growth phase |
This does not make private markets right for everyone. Longer horizons, reduced liquidity and different risk characteristics all demand careful consideration. But where they are suitable, a wider opportunity set allows a portfolio to reflect an investor's objectives rather than the limits of what happens to be listed.
The objective is never complexity. It is broader choice.
Access should not mean exclusivity
There is a persistent idea that private market investing derives its value from exclusivity. We think its value comes from opportunity.
Qualified investors should be able to consider the same types of investment that institutions and family offices have long held, provided those opportunities suit their objectives, experience and risk profile. That is not an argument for lower standards. Wider access demands greater transparency, stronger governance and better investor education, not less.
The goal is to widen opportunity, not to widen risk.
The Jura view
We believe access is one of the most overlooked drivers of long term investment outcomes.
The strongest opportunities are not always the most visible. More often they exist where competition is lower, information is less widely distributed and participation has historically been limited to institutions and family offices.
Our role is not to add complexity. It is to close the distance between institutional quality opportunities and qualified investors building more diversified portfolios, and to make sure those investors see the whole picture before they decide anything.
Access alone does not guarantee success. But without it, some of the most significant opportunities in modern investing never enter the conversation at all.
Begin a conversation
See what access actually looks like.
If your portfolio could benefit from disciplined private market exposure, we would welcome a conversation. Choose a starting point that matches your objectives, private equity, asset backed income, alternative assets, or simply exploring, and we will take it from there.