You’ve worked hard and made smart decisions to get where you are. Now, you’re in a strong position to consider early retirement, without compromising your lifestyle or long-term financial goals. Still, even with this success, you might ask yourself: Am I truly making the most of my financial situation? Could there be opportunities I’m overlooking?
If you’re looking for ways to diversify beyond traditional markets, one area worth exploring is investing in private markets—an option available to high earners with significant investable assets. Growth equity and venture capital, in particular, can be great ways to bolster returns in your portfolio. However, due to the risk and hold periods typically associated with this kind of investing, the dollars dedicated to these riskier assets should only be money you won’t need for a long time.
Could this fit into your long-term investment strategy? With guidance from a knowledgeable advisor, you can align private market investments with your stage in life, risk tolerance, and financial goals. You can build a portfolio designed to support your lifestyle with limited fear of running out of money.
Let’s look at how private market investments across venture capital, growth equity, and buyouts can serve different roles in your portfolio and how a diversified approach can help you maximize long-term value when done thoughtfully.
Why Private Market Investing Belongs in the Conversation
Shaped by persistent inflation concerns, accelerating technological innovation, and shifting trade dynamics, the investment landscape has changed. Public markets remain important, but sticking with this route doesn’t offer full access to the industries and companies driving tomorrow’s growth. That’s where private equity and venture capital comes in.
Private market equity gives investors a way to participate in businesses at various stages of growth before they go public or instead of going public. From high-potential startups to steady, cash-generating enterprises, private market investing can help investors achieve considerable portfolio growth, often with reduced correlation to traditional market swings.
With structure and guidance, private equity strategies can support your desire for financial independence, help to mitigate market volatility, and complement a long-term wealth plan that balances growth and stability.
Understanding Private Market Investing Through the Business Cycle
If considering private equity investing is new to you, note that it isn’t a monolith. It spans a spectrum of strategies, each tied to where a company is in its life cycle.
Understanding where a company sits in the business cycle can help investors better navigate the trade-offs of risk, return, and liquidity. Envision Wealth Planners blends these strategies to suit each client.
- Venture Capital (VC): Early-stage companies, pre-revenue, or just beginning to generate sales.
- Growth Equity: Expanding businesses with validated products and a clear path to profitability.
- Buyouts: Mature, stable companies with strong earnings optimized for operational efficiency.
Understanding where a company sits in the business cycle can help investors better navigate the trade-offs of risk, return, and liquidity. Envision Wealth Planners blends these strategies to suit each client’s specific goals—whether you’re five years from retirement, planning to exit your business, or simply looking to make the most of annual cash surpluses.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the options in the private market equity spectrum.
Venture Capital: Fueling Innovation and Big Vision
Venture capital targets early-stage companies that are often pre-revenue but high in ambition. These firms may be building disruptive technologies, launching innovative consumer products, or breaking new ground in biotech or clean energy.
In return for equity, VC investors provide funding, mentorship, strategic guidance, and connections. While the risk is high—many startups fail—the potential for outsized returns attracts investors willing to bet on the next market-defining company. In 2025, we’re seeing interest in AI, sustainable energy, life sciences, and more, continuing to make VC a high-risk, high-reward segment.
VC is best suited for investors with a long time horizon, a high risk tolerance, and the ability to withstand uneven performance in pursuit of transformational upside.
Growth Equity: Scaling Proven Winners
Growth equity is the middle ground. It focuses on companies with proven products or services and strong revenue growth, often with annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $10 million to $50 million. These companies may not yet be profitable, but they have a clear plan to get there.
Growth equity investors typically fund expansion efforts—new markets, strategic acquisitions, or technology improvements. In sectors like SaaS, e-commerce, and green tech, growth equity supports the scaling of businesses that have already demonstrated market traction.
For investors, growth equity offers a more balanced profile than VC: reduced downside risk, with realistic potential for 2x to 5x returns. While it sacrifices some of VC’s moonshot potential, it’s a strong option for those who want private market exposure with less volatility than early-stage investing.
Buyouts: Optimizing Established Businesses
Buyouts focus on mature, cash-flow-positive companies with stable earnings, often in industries like healthcare, manufacturing, and consumer goods. Private equity firms acquire controlling stakes in these businesses and work to improve operations, reduce costs, or reposition the company for long-term growth.
Returns in buyouts are typically more modest than VC or growth equity—often 1.5x to 3x over a five- to seven-year period—but are backed by real earnings and strategic execution. Investors benefit from more predictable performance and lower exposure to market shocks.
Buyouts serve as a foundational component in private portfolios, helping preserve capital and generate income while balancing higher-risk growth allocations.
Blending Strategy with Life Stage and Liquidity Goals
You’ve achieved some success and are well on the path to building wealth. At this stage in life, it’s not just about maximizing returns—it’s about aligning your portfolio with the life you want to live. Now’s the time to consider working with an advisor who takes into account your financial independence timeline, lifestyle goals, liquidity needs, and estate plans.
A strong private market strategy might include a modest allocation to VC investing for long-term upside, some growth equity investing for mid-term growth with lower volatility, and investing in buyouts for income and portfolio stability.
Blending these private investments alongside your public market holdings will help create a personalized and resilient wealth plan.
Making Private Market Investing Work for You
Not all financial advisors can offer private investments, and among those who can, not all offerings are equal.
At Envision, we work with open-architecture platforms and use a transparent manager selection process, enabling access to carefully vetted private investment managers across the business cycle. This allows for strategic alignment with your risk tolerance and goals, diversified exposure to innovation, growth, and stability, and custom portfolio design based on your liquidity, tax, and time-horizon considerations.
Access matters. But smart, aligned implementation matters more. You’ve built wealth through thoughtful effort. Now it’s time to make sure that wealth continues working for you—with clarity, confidence, and opportunity.
Private market investing isn’t just for institutions and endowments anymore. With the right guidance, you can harness a diversified mix of venture capital, growth equity, and buyouts to support your next chapter.
If you’re wondering whether you’re missing opportunities or whether your current strategy reflects what’s possible today, let’s talk.
Sean Gerlin, CFP®, CPWA®, ChFC®, CLU®, is the Founder and Principal of Envision Wealth Planners, a fee-only financial advisory firm based in the greater Orlando area. Sean specializes in helping high-income families, business owners, and commercial real estate executives align their wealth with their values through a comprehensive Financial Life Planning approach. Learn more about them at envisionplanners.com.
This material has been prepared in collaboration with Crystal Marketing Solutions, LLC, and has been edited with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools. The information presented is based on sources believed to be reliable and accurate at the time of publication. This material is for educational purposes only and does not necessarily reflect the views of the author, presenter, or affiliated organizations. It should not be construed as investment, tax, legal, or other professional advice. Always consult a qualified professional regarding your specific situation before making any decisions.