I'm sure a large part of HN's audience legitimately qualifies. The majority of FAANG engineers are accredited investors. $200k income per year is the threshold and a college hire at Google can make that these days. Facebook's median compensation is $240k (across all roles, not just engineering).

Unfortunately even an accredited investor can't purchase SpaceX shares because they are not available. You have to be a really big investor to buy shares directly from SpaceX in one of their funding rounds. You can't purchase shares from employees because of trading restrictions. Your options are limited to participation in consortiums or funds and these tend to have really bad terms.

trading restrictions are discretionary and also circumventable

grease some palms if you have to, the consequences aren't always/necessarily your problem

the restrictions are either contractual and discretionary by the issuer, and/or the secondary sale is the issuer's regulatory problem but the accredited-only status can absolve