Christine Healey: How to Invest in Private Unicorns?

Christine Healey is CEO of Healey Pre IPO and an expert in private tech investments with nearly a decade of experience brokering deals in unicorns like SpaceX and OpenAI, and we spoke about the fragmented world of pre-IPO investing, why high-net-worth individuals are drawn to it, and how her concierge service simplifies access to these elusive opportunities. We discussed the challenges of navigating shady platforms, unreliable deals, and the lack of a centralized exchange for private shares, contrasting it with the ease of public markets where "you can go onto an exchange and type in a ticker and it's very simple and centralized." 

Christine shared her journey from investment banking to leading a pre-IPO fund and launching her own business, emphasizing the shift in company lifecycles: "Today these large private tech companies are choosing to delay their IPOs and stay private, sometimes up to billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in valuation," which shuts out public investors from massive growth. From my perspective, the most important insight is the democratization of access—pre-IPO shouldn't be reserved for venture capitalists or the ultra-connected, as it allows everyday accredited investors to own stakes in "futuristic pioneering companies that are changing our world." 

Listeners can learn strategies for managing risks in this high-reward market, like adopting a "flight to quality" by focusing on high-conviction companies, and the value of a personal broker to avoid "analysis paralysis" from false starts and impersonal platforms. 

A clever highlight: Christine calls out the "proliferation of mediocrity" in brokers and platforms that promise access but often lead to frustration, noting, "They want to talk to a human. It's almost like an old school, human approach to a market that is very new school." Key takeaways include: Accreditation requirements (e.g., $200K income or $1M net worth) gatekeep entry but open doors to potentially larger upsides than public IPOs; building a global network—from California employees to Middle Eastern family offices—yields better deals; and while successes like SpaceX inspire, failures like FTX remind us it's "a high risk market and it's a certain niche of investor that will really be drawn to the type of opportunities at play here." 

Overall, this conversation demystifies pre-IPO as a viable diversification tool for savvy investors passionate about tech innovation.