Private equity is a very high risk/high reward activity.
There is ways to succeed with it, but you need to be researching these companies at an insane level and put a ton of reliance on the company's management.
This isn't something you can just set and forget. You've got to be on the ball, at all times.
Or, you can invest in something called a private equity fund. These companies essentially carry with them a basket of private equity companies, and they list on a stock exchange for investors to buy.
Take for example Apollo Healthcare Corp. They trade under the ticker AHC.TO.
As I mentioned, private equity is extremely high risk/high reward. I can't stress enough that you shouldn't be placing any amount of capital that isn't expendable into private equity investments. It can be gone in very short order.