At least they don’t SPAC their way into the public market but the answer to your question is yes!

Always has been? (Well, with pyramid schemes anyway.)

I guess making the investment conditional on the company doing an IPO (or something that will never happen) should remove any doubts.

But I'm not sure there is enough money on the world (literally) for them to get an IPO high enough. If they sell too little of the company, they'll be still holding the bag when it fails.