As an individual, the only chance you'd have to invest in a hot startup is to be an angel investor, or else close family or really good friends with the founders or VCs. Even accredited investors with 10s of millions got turned away from hot startups like Spotify and Snapchat (back when it was the big kahuna).

And let's be clear: you can still invest in a startup as a non-accredited investor. There is no prohibition on that, or else startups couldn't give equity to employees, contractors, or others (see, e.g., pre-IPO Facebook and Google, and the many famous stories of dotcom millionaires from their respective IPOs).