Hi {{first_name}},
I've spent decades developing a network that surfaces private market deals you won't find anywhere else. It’s how I got into Anthropic a year ago at a $350 billion valuation. Through one of our own Build Wealth investors. Now they are looking to IPO at a $2 trillion valuation sometime this fall, which, on paper, puts me up roughly 500% today.
Even if it opens strong and then an AI bubble burst drops it 40% right out of the gate, I'd still be sitting somewhere around 3x my entry.
What I'm saying is, if you buy Anthropic at the IPO, you're not getting in early on a hot company. You're my exit.
It’s not a brag. I'm telling you because it's the perspective I want you to understand–there’s another level in the private markets. First, let me give some context.
2026 is shaping up as a landmark year for IPOs.
SpaceX was first. It priced at $135 a share back in June, raised about $75 billion, and has a $2 trillion valuation today. The largest IPO ever. (You may even recall that I passed on it in 2019.) Anthropic appears to be gearing up to break that record. OpenAI was racing toward their own listing this year but recently pushed back to at least 2027. Databricks, notably, also shared plans to hold off. Its CEO called 2026 "a terrible year to go public," and wants to continue raising capital instead (I have my own thoughts on why he decided to do this, but I’ll hold off for now).
IPOs are exciting. A hot, trending company dominating headlines. We look forward to them because they are milestones of progress, and our ability to get a little slice of the world's most powerful companies is exhilarating. And companies like SpaceX are sexy, just like Facebook in 2012, Uber in 2019, Amazon in 1997.
I still can't help mentioning at cocktail parties that I bought Facebook and NVIDIA for about $19 in 2012. It's true! Of course, I sold them both way too early in order to buy a house (darn liquidity!). Of course I’ve made plenty of bad trades as well, but it’s nice to learn when you’re right along the way.
You may be asking yourself, "Walker, this is a private investing newsletter, so why are we talking about Initial Public Offerings?"
Because as exciting as the headlines can be, your entry is the insider's exit.
This week we're talking about the other side of the IPO.
A full report on what an IPO really is.
The toolkit every private holder has for deciding whether to sell, hold, or wait once the lockup lifts.
And a playbook to determine how to tell whether you're acting like an allocator or an exit buyer.
And make sure you check out this week’s report. Our team did a full quantitative deep dive.
— Walker Deibel
WSJ & USA Today Bestselling Author of Buy Then Build
Founder, Build Wealth
P.S. Getting in early is the point. Tomorrow I'm going live with our newest opportunity. A company I started investing in 11 years ago that just landed a $100M+ U.S. government contract. Come see where, why, and how I'm investing in developing FDEs.
SHIFT YOUR STACK
The Clock Starts With the IPO
SpaceX went first. The largest IPO ever, priced at $135 a share in June. It opened above $135, then spiked at $225 within days, and then unwound almost the entire run, trading below its IPO price for weeks before settling around $153. The insiders who came in at $135 are fine. The people who bought at the higher end are still underwater. The clock started the moment it was listed.
The clock will count down who can sell and when. Elon Musk and company insiders sit under a 366-day lockup. Everyone else, including the earlier investors, the employees, and funds, sits under a shorter, staggered 180-day schedule that starts opening in early December, right at the six-month mark. At that point those who got in years ago will be able to sell for the first time. Some will cash out; they came for the profit. Others will hold out for more. It’s the game of going public.
But enough will sell that it's worth remembering that date. In the weeks surrounding it, the price will have less to do with SpaceX's business and more to do with how many shares hit the market at once. And that’s the question before buying. Whose exit are you funding?
Not every company is starting that clock. Databricks is sitting the year out, raising private capital instead of competing with SpaceX, OpenAI, and a potential Anthropic listing for attention.
The Number You Can’t Sell At
A private valuation isn't a price you can sell at. It comes from one of three places. The last funding round, a 409A appraisal, or an occasional secondary trade and none of them is an offer for your actual stake. When shares do trade privately, they usually go 10–30% below the last round, wider if the market doubts the company.
On paper, you're rich. In the bank, you're not. That number isn't yours until someone buys it, at a price they pick, on a day they choose.
From $47 Billion to $45 Million
We all remember this lesson. In early 2019, WeWork was worth $47 billion. One of the most valuable startups ever. SoftBank kept funding the company and marking it up, from $20 billion in 2017 to $47 billion two years later.
Then WeWork filed to go public. The day the financials became readable, the story started to crack. A $1.9 billion loss on $1.8 billion in revenue. The valuation was cut to $10 billion, and then the company requested to pull the IPO back. The founder stepped down. A year later SoftBank re-marked its own stake to $2.9 billion, admitting the $47 billion was never there.
WeWork still reached the public market, through a SPAC at $9 billion in 2021. By November 2023 it filed for bankruptcy at a market cap of about $45 million. A near wipeout in four years.
For years the only person pricing WeWork was the same person buying it. The IPO was the first real test of the business’s value, and the number everyone had been repeating turned out to be off by a factor of a thousand.
Public markets did their job in this case. WeWork's financials had real problems. The handoff gave someone new a chance to price it.
Amazon Was Once a Handoff, Too
The biggest names in tech were all handoffs once. And to be fair, they weren’t disasters. Amazon made its public buyers plenty rich. So did Facebook and Tesla. But "will this stock perform well" and "whose exit am I funding to get in now and on what terms" are different questions. You can be correct about the first one and still lose on the second.
Amazon's early investors got a fixed price, protection if the deal soured, and years of watching the business before the public saw a number. So buying in after the early money isn't a losing move by itself. You're just playing a different hand than they did, and you should know which side you’re on before committing to the game.
Your Entry is the Insider’s Exit
Risk doesn't disappear when the lockup lifts, but it does change hands to whoever's holding the stock when the selling starts.
When SpaceX's lockup lifts, early investors hand their shares, and the risk attached, to public buyers. When WeWork's mark finally met real scrutiny, the loss didn't vanish. It landed on whoever owned the stock that day. And a private mark that never gets tested isn't safe. It's waiting for the day someone is forced to price it.
Private and public markets have to work together, and capital moves between them all the time. Venture capital, private credit, banks, and corporate partners sit inside a company's financing before it lists. Once it hits the public markets, the risks get buried inside securities that are owned by the public investors. The allocator has a view of each stage.
You should always be aware of where in that chain you sit and who handed the asset to you.
And right now that chain is almost all AI, led by Anthropic and OpenAI. Those valuations rest on private rounds and revenue projections that still need to be proved.
We put the full version of this view in a report, The AI Exit Machine. Read what happens when these dynamics scale from private portfolios into public ones. The circular financing, the leverage stacking under the leading names, and the profitability gap public buyers are being asked to absorb.
BEHIND THE NUMBERS
The Price of Getting In Late
Venture capital, private equity, the big institutional money all get in years earlier, at a fraction of the retail price. They hold on through the whole climb as the company inches towards an IPO. By the time it lists, most of that gain is already priced into the shares and the new ticker reflects the price the early investors hope to exit for.
So the IPO does three things. It raises capital for the company, it lets early shareholders cash out, and it moves the risk to retail investors, often paying higher prices just for a chance to get in.
Below is a breakdown of how each stage from seed to retail pays more than the one before. Holding an IPO stock long term can be a great investment (i.e. FB @ $19!!), but from the months leading up to the IPO, the retail investor pays the most and gets in last.
THE PLAYBOOK
Which Side of the Table Are You On?
Every IPO is one person handing risk to another. Which side you're on decides what you should be asking before the shares change hands.
Selling? There Are Four Ways Out
You're holding a private position and a listing is coming. You have four ways out, each on its own clock, each with trade-offs. The first two need access, an invitation from the company or the bankers. The last two are open to anyone holding the stock.
Pre-IPO secondary or tender offer. Sell straight to the company or an existing investor before the listing, without waiting for lockup. The trade-off: A known price now, usually below the last round. That discount is the cost you pay to skip the line.
Sell into the IPO. Take the offering price on day one, before the market reacts to the business. Open to select insiders and early backers, depending on the deal. The trade-off: No lockup to wait out, and no exposure to the debut. But you are locking in the offering price whether the stock pops or drops.
Staged selling after lockup. This is the most common. Wait out the 180 days, then sell in planned pieces instead of all at once. The trade-off: This limits your exposure to a single bad week of trading, and it spreads your tax exposure across periods too. But you stay exposed to the stock longer, so a slow decline over the staging period can cost you. Selling across tax years may also help manage your rate, depending on your income. Though of course, it’s worth a call with your tax planner before the window opens.
Hold through. You do nothing. This is the only option that isn't really a plan. It's a bet that your original reason for buying still holds. The others force you to pick a sell price. Holding does too, except the price lives in your head so you aren’t being asked to test it against reality. It only makes sense to hold when you can say specifically why the business still supports the price you'd need to see later, and how you'd know if that stopped being true.
None of those four moves is right or wrong in isolation. What's right depends on what you can honestly say to the questions underneath the decision.
Who owned this risk before you did? If it's a founder, an early employee, or a fund that's been underwriting the business since it was worth a tenth of today's price, you're buying work someone else already did. If it's another investor who bought in six months ago at nearly today's price, you're buying someone else's exit.
Why is liquidity being offered to you now? A tender at a discount exists because someone needs cash before the lockup lifts. A secondary at a premium can exist because someone believes the price is about to fall. Neither answer makes the trade wrong. Not knowing which one you're in does.
Is your return tied to the business, or to the next buyer? If it’s tied to the economics, you're investing. Tied to the belief that someone will value it more enthusiastically than you did, that's speculation that looks like investing.
What happens if the exit you're expecting doesn't show up? If the lockup lifts and the stock is down 20 percent, does your thesis survive, or was the thesis really "get out before that happens"? There's no clean pass or fail. A deal that falls short can still be worth funding. The compounding just gets harder to underwrite, so size your position, and your conviction, accordingly.
Buying at the IPO?
Anyone can buy on day one. So remember, you're stepping in right as the early money gets to leave (if they choose), at a price built on demand. The crowd that chased the SpaceX debut ended up underwater while the insiders who got in early are fine. Getting in at the IPO isn't wrong, it's just late. Wait for the S-1, let the hype settle, and buy on a number the market set.
Better Yet, Get Upstream Before the Next Listing
By the time the buyer can act, the terms are already set in the seller's favor.
To get on the seller's side of the table before the next listing, we walked through the steps in our earlier issue that came out right before the SpaceX IPO. It’s worth going back if you missed it.
It came down to three moves. Get upstream and look to own equity before the bankers and the roadshow arrive, through co-investment or the secondary market, where the entry sits far below the eventual listing. Then wait for the compression window. If you want public exposure anyway, the lockup expiration, months after a listing, is a calmer entry than the noise of day one. And finally, build access now, because the seats upstream go to people with real relationships to the operators and fund managers who see the deals first.
WEALTH STACK REBELLION
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer (Author)
Look for the entrance and you'll find someone else's exit. An IPO could be a great entry point. Just be aware that the IPO isn't the beginning of the story.
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This is not financial advice. Illustrative output of a reasoned thought experiment. Not a backtest, guarantee, or prospectus. Actual results vary based on market conditions, fund selection, timing, fees, taxes, and factors not modeled. Private credit, CRE, and leveraged strategies involve significant risk including loss of principal. Consult a qualified financial advisor.
