Introducing Better Markets

Better Markets is a global exchange for private equity. The goal is to make the world's most valuable private companies accessible to everyone—not just institutions and insiders.

Investment opportunity should follow conviction, not credential. In an ideal world, access would be as broadly distributed as ambition. We're building toward that world. The outcome is uncertain and the work is difficult, but we believe the goal and structure are right. We hope that's what matters most to the investors and builders who join us.

The Problem

Private markets have operated as an uneven playing field for decades. The most valuable companies stay private longer and longer, generating enormous wealth for venture capitalists, institutional investors, and company insiders—while ordinary investors remain locked out until an IPO that might never come.

The disparity has grown starker in recent years. SpaceX, Stripe, and OpenAI have reached valuations of hundreds of billions of dollars while remaining private. Returns generated in private markets have consistently outpaced public markets. Yet access has stayed exclusive—connections and six-figure minimums remain the price of entry.

Secondary markets exist, of course. But they've operated more like private clubs than genuine exchanges. Multi-week settlement. Six-figure minimums. PDFs and manual processes. No real-time pricing. No transparency. These platforms were built for institutions, not individuals.

We've watched technology transform other parts of finance. Public stock trading went from phone calls to brokers to instant mobile execution. Banking moved from branch visits to apps. Yet private markets remained stuck, operating the same way they did decades ago.

The Opportunity

The companies building the infrastructure of the future are largely private. Artificial intelligence. Space exploration. Clean energy. Biotechnology. The next generation of financial systems. Most of this value creation is happening outside public markets—in a space that excludes the vast majority of potential investors.

The exclusion isn't inevitable. It's structural. And structures can be redesigned.

Better Markets is that redesign. A platform built from scratch for private equity trading, with the goal of creating value for all investors rather than extracting it for intermediaries. Transparent pricing. Real order books. Instant settlement.

What We've Built

Better Markets offers access to the world's most sought-after private companies: SpaceX, Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, Anduril, and many more. We've eliminated the barriers that kept private markets exclusive:

$1 minimum investment. No six-figure hurdles. Start with what you're comfortable with and scale up as you learn.

Zero platform fees. We don't charge transaction fees or management fees. The price you see is the price you pay.

Instant settlement. No waiting weeks for paperwork and approvals. Trades settle immediately.

24/7 liquidity. Buy or sell on your schedule. No waiting for market hours or counterparty matching.

Real-time pricing. Transparent order books and genuine price discovery. Not indicative quotes that may or may not reflect reality.

The Team

Better Markets was founded by Michael C. Jakob, who studied at MIT and previously worked at McKinsey and UBS. Michael went on to found two unicorn companies—Eulerpool and AlleAktien—platforms that democratized access to financial data and investment research for retail investors across Europe.

Through those experiences, a pattern emerged: public markets had become accessible to everyone, but private markets remained closed. Better Markets exists to complete that transformation—bringing the transparency, accessibility, and speed that changed public trading into private markets.

What Comes Next

This is the beginning. Better Markets is live, with thousands of investors participating in private equity markets that were previously inaccessible to them.

The roadmap includes expanding coverage to hundreds more companies, developing institutional-grade APIs for fintechs and wealth managers, and working toward regulatory frameworks that enable even broader access.

The transformation that NASDAQ brought to public markets is now happening in private markets. We're building Better Markets to make that real.

Explore markets on Better Markets →

For media inquiries, partnerships, or questions, reach out at hello@bettermarkets.app