While there can be exceptions, most of the wealth accumulation we observe from Evergreen clients has been derived from technology or real estate. Those whose wealth has come from technology feel as though their financial success is largely "digital wealth." They can see it on a screen, yet it seems intangible. Employees of established technology companies often have large stock incentives. Employees, investors, and founders in a tech start-up are inextricably linked to the success of a young business. Both forms of tech-driven wealth share the common bond of dramatic concentration in the performance of a single company. Conversely, individuals who have amassed wealth through exposure to real estate are unsettled by a sense that real estate is the financial engine of yesteryear. They can drive by a building day after day and, while it feels durable, it isn't growing or innovating.
These disparate feelings toward technology and real estate understandably drive both parties to crave what they don't possess. This is hardly a theoretical observation. Over the last decade, Evergreen Ventures has intentionally launched private investments that cater to both real estate (or hard assets) and technology. To little surprise, the real estate people have embraced the opportunity to complement their asset allocation with technology, and vice versa. Those in technology want investment stability to replace abstraction, while those in real estate seek to participate in economic innovation in place of financial dependability. The instinctual attraction of these groups to dissimilar investments is a healthy investing response. Each party is rarely looking to swap one form of wealth entirely for another; instead, they are eager to access complementary exposure.
Before going further, I should clarify something about these two groups. When I refer to tech individuals, I do not mean someone who invests in the stock market and holds a diversified basket of technology stocks. I mean individuals who possess radical exposure to a single company's outcome. Similarly, when I refer to real estate, I do not mean someone who has limited exposure to the industry. You may be surprised how many people in real estate have little to no investment outside the asset class.
Tech Tremors
A deeper examination of technology and real estate offers helpful insight into why these asset classes benefit one another. Let's start with the characteristics of technology-based wealth and the consistent themes we can observe. Technology is inherently a productivity-based asset. Said more plainly, the very essence of technology is to innovate, replacing the old with the new. Consider the impact of the smartphone. Today, almost everyone uses one, whether an Android or an iPhone. Its arrival spelled doom for preceding industry heavyweights like Nokia, Motorola, and BlackBerry. The tech industry is built on disrupting itself over and over again. The companies that survive must continually reinvent themselves, staving off the threat of new entrants. This Darwinian process hardly leaves those in the tech industry going to sleep at night with a feeling of economic safety. Aside from the constant threat of competition, many tech investors and employees face long roads to wealth realization. The founder of a wildly successful start-up is likely many years from actually seeing dollars in his or her bank account. Employees of large tech enterprises often have their stock tied up in complicated, drawn-out vesting periods well into the future. In many ways, tech wealth creates a psychological paradox: feeling as though you have wealth while also feeling as though you can never truly touch it.
Given the dynamics described above, it becomes clear why tech wealth naturally migrates toward real estate. Someone who invests in an apartment building has a very different psychological experience. First, you can literally touch the building. It's the definition of tangible. Unlike tech, which depends on disruption, real estate thrives on scarcity. Land is finite. Building takes time and is riddled with regulatory and zoning challenges. Even if a competitor constructs a better building, it does not render your investment obsolete. Second, many real estate investments offer cash flow far sooner than investments in technology. In fact, many technology investments openly acknowledge that they don't plan to provide any cash flow along the way, and that all gains will be realized at the time of sale. Lastly, investors who reallocate capital to real estate can identify assets that offer slower, more methodical rates of return compared with the unpredictable nature of return forecasting in technology.
Boring Buildings
Successful real estate investors know full well the challenges that come with the asset class. For starters, it is incredibly capital- and time-intensive. You must first raise the required equity, then in most cases find a lender to finance the balance. Once you own the building, you must manage occupancy and perform the necessary upkeep. Real estate veterans will attest that it is hardly a "set it and forget it" asset.
In real estate, the ultimate gain comprises two key components: the cash flow the building generates and the property's underlying appreciation. If we look at historical returns in real estate, it quickly becomes clear that if technology is the hare, real estate is the tortoise. While this may echo the mantra that slow and steady wins the race, many real estate investors — particularly those in cities with vibrant tech hubs — don't share the view. They are attracted to the spectacular wealth that can be created in technology with far less capital or resource commitment. Instagram's 2012 acquisition by Facebook for roughly $1 billion, with only 13 employees, is an often-cited example of the scale of value technology companies can create — though such outcomes are rare, and most early-stage technology investments do not achieve comparable results. Said simply, immense value can be created in technology far faster than it ever will be in real estate. Those in real estate in the Seattle area and other tech hubs are surrounded by the profound wealth effect technology has created.
When we speak with investors who want to diversify into technology from real estate, we often hear two things. First, that they know they own too much real estate as a percentage of their net worth and want to invest in technology. Second, that they feel completely daunted by the prospect of investing in a world that seems so foreign to them. Familiar terms like appraisal, feasibility, cap rate, and loan-to-value have no home in tech investing. They're replaced by concepts such as J-curve, pro rata rights, vintage risk, ARR, and burn rate. Even understanding what a company does can be confounding. A founder may describe their technology in what they consider plain English and still might as well be speaking Greek. So while they know they want to participate in this asset class, they are typically intent on seeking professional guidance because they don't know how.
Conclusion
Many of our clients arrive concentrated in one of the two asset classes this essay has been comparing, and each needs what the other has. The technology client holds paper wealth exposed to concentrated company risk. The real estate investor holds the mirror image: durable, income-producing, inflation-linked assets that are levered, geographically fixed, and structurally incapable of the exponential growth that can occur within the tech industry. The solution cannot be found in the public markets alone. The listed universe of public stocks has contracted from roughly 8,090 U.S. companies in 1996 to about 4,200 at the end of 2025, and the median company now reaches its IPO at twelve years old rather than eight, so the growth a real estate investor wants exposure to largely occurs before it is publicly purchasable. We believe the targeted, tactical real estate deployment a technology investor needs is likewise poorly served by public market vehicles.
Our private vehicles exist to move capital across that divide in both directions, with the vintage discipline and diligence designed to be difficult for an individual investor to replicate on their own. Private returns depend heavily on the entry environment when capital is deployed, so a single commitment is a concentrated bet on one year's pricing; the remedy is committing steadily across vintages, which requires a standing pacing model, continuing access to funds, and infrastructure to manage a series of funds. Pooling client capital also lets us meet institutional minimums and negotiate terms directly rather than accepting retail feeders that add fee layers without adding scrutiny. None of this makes private investments better, as they are designed to complement a client's public market allocations. Identifying how much to place in private funds is a collaborative discussion best led by an experienced advisor. Manager dispersion in private markets is far wider than in public markets, which means selection matters and a poorly built program can underperform a simple public portfolio. These investments are illiquid, typically committed for seven to ten years, carry higher fees, report estimated rather than market valuations, and can lose value. Not all clients will be candidates for these investments, but we believe they serve a vital role in optimizing portfolio construction for investors who meet the criteria.
DISCLOSURE: Evergreen Ventures is the alternative investment division of Evergreen Gavekal. Qualifying clients for the Evergreen Ventures alternative investment platform are those who meet the criteria for Accredited Investor and Qualified Client, or Qualified Purchaser status and for whom the specific fund has been deemed suitable by the Advisor.
This material has been prepared or is distributed solely for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation or an offer to buy any security or instrument or to participate in any trading strategy. Any opinions, recommendations, and assumptions included in this presentation are based upon current market conditions, reflect our judgment as of the date of this presentation, and are subject to change. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk including the loss of principal. All material presented is compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy cannot be guaranteed and Evergreen makes no representation as to its accuracy or completeness. Securities highlighted or discussed in this communication are mentioned for illustrative purposes only and are not a recommendation for these securities. Evergreen actively manages client portfolios and securities discussed in this communication may or may not be held in such portfolios at any given time.
