With this year’s crop of superstar IPO filings, including SpaceX and Anthropic, there has been a greater focus on the role venture capital plays in investors’ portfolios. The stage at which promising companies go public has moved much later in their evolution, meaning that investors seeking the outsized returns of betting on the next Apple, Amazon, or SpaceX must do so while the companies are still private.

Traditionally, that has not been an avenue open to many individual investors, as venture capital funds have tended to come with qualified purchaser requirements, hefty investment minimums, 15-plus-year payoff horizons and limited liquidity mechanisms. A new crop of players, however, is promising mass-affluent investors that they…