The $6 billion Airwallex lesson: why value creation happens before you can access it

When Airwallex announced its $US300 million Series F round last month, valuing the payments company at $US6.2 billion, Blackbird partner Michael Tolo made an unusually candid admission.
"We absolutely made a mistake not investing earlier," he said. "And it's the most expensive one that we have made at Blackbird."
His reflection reveals a systemic shift affecting all investors. When billion-dollar growth funds find themselves paying premium valuations for late-stage deals, it demonstrates how the traditional playbook - wait for proven success, then invest - now captures only the tail end of value creation.
Consider Airwallex's journey from different investor perspectives:
Even if Blackbird doubles their money from the Series F, they're capturing perhaps 0.2% of the value that pre-seed investors secured.
Compare this to Canva, where Blackbird invested $250,000 in the company's $3 million seed round in 2013 and participated in its entire value creation journey to a $50 billion private valuation.
Individual sophisticated investors face the same structural challenge:
According to PitchBook data, companies now stay private 2.5 times longer than they did in the 1990s. This means the rapid growth phase – where a $5 million company becomes a $5 billion company – happens entirely in private markets.
Traditional portfolios, regardless of sophistication, simply cannot access these opportunities during their wealth creation phase.
Professional early-stage venture capital funds are designed specifically for this challenge. They invest in 20-50 companies during their highest-risk, highest-reward phase, understanding that exceptional returns from winners more than compensate for inevitable failures.
Cambridge Associates research demonstrates this "power law" effect has consistently delivered 25-35% annual returns for top quartile early-stage funds over two decades.
The numbers speak for themselves:
When Airwallex eventually goes public, individual investors will finally have the opportunity to own shares.
But they'll be purchasing a mature, established business valued at billions rather than participating in the foundational value creation that generated exponential returns for private investors.
The critical insight isn't that public markets are poor investments. It's that modern wealth creation increasingly happens in private markets first. By the time companies reach public exchanges, their most dramatic growth phases are largely behind them.
For sophisticated investors, the question isn't whether they can afford to invest in early-stage venture capital. It's whether they can afford to remain entirely disconnected from where modern innovation creates transformational wealth.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or an offer to invest. Investments in venture capital carry significant risks and are suitable only for sophisticated investors. For more information, please request our Information Memorandum. This offer is not available to retail investors.