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Benzinga Fintech Day & Awards 2025 was held in New York City on Monday, connecting capital markets, fintech leaders and investors. Guillaume Goussault, director of business development & partnerships at Yahoo! Finance, hosted a panel titled "Private Markets: A New Age for Retail Investors.” He opened the discussion by voicing what many retail investors are thinking: Private markets are more than "just OpenAI and SpaceX." Read Next: Top Stocks With Earnings This Week: Plug, Oklo, Circle And More Bri Lynch, head of market insights at EquityZen, highlighted the sheer volume of private-market "unicorns," noting that there are roughly six times as many billion-dollar private tech startups as there are comparable public companies. Other panelists agreed that there are enormous opportunities for all types of investors in private companies. "Private markets are the assets that everyone wants to play in, but very few people can," said Mitch DiRaimondo, co-founder of SteelWave. He pointed to institutional gatekeepers, high investment minimums and complex social maneuvering as some of the barriers to entry in private markets. DiRaimondo said technology is "rattling the cages of a lot of these big-time institutional investors that have been gatekeeping these investments for a real long time." All of the panel participants agreed on one idea: Technology is the key to making private markets more accessible to average investors. However, there is still more work to be done. Andrew Kroculick, COO of Nasdaq Private Market, compared the process to that of buying or selling a home. He noted that there are still obstacles like transfer restrictions, complex corporate relationships, and regulatory work that need to be improved and built up. Lynch pointed to higher risk in private markets and that education on how transactions work and how to diversify is part of the solution. Again, all panelists seemed to agree that retail investors accessing private markets is an exciting market frontier that should be expanded responsibly. Eric Thomassian, executive vice president at Forge, highlighted passive private market index funds as appealing to a broad base of average investors and a potentially key ingredient for diversified investment portfolios in the near future. More cutting-edge ideas are coming out of the Benzinga Fintech Day & Awards 2025. See more details here and watch for more coverage on Benzinga.com. Read Next: IREN CEO Teases Deals Even Bigger Than Microsoft Photo: Shutterstock
