Private companies have become the next frontier for investors who want in on the next Facebook or Twitter before it goes public.
"All the best companies are creating opportunity to buy and sell before going public. That’s never happened before," SecondMarket CEO Barry Silbert told CNBC Thursday.
"In the past couple of years the private company market has become an asset class," he said. "Companies want it and there’s investor demand.
He added, "Think about all the companies out there, thousands of private companies that can benefit from a marketplace" including community banks, established private companies, technology companies and subsidiaries of publicly traded conglomerates.
SecondMarket is an online secondary marketplace for alternative investments.
"We're letting the crowd decide which of the companies we’ll create markets in," Silbert said.