In this YouTube video, Akeel Jabbar, Investment Director and GP at Horizon Capital, explains how he would allocate a $1 million portfolio in 2021. He begins by critiquing low‑yield bank deposits and emphasizes the need for higher‑return, double‑digit investments. The discussion is split into passive and active approaches. For passive investing, he recommends scaling up to commercial real‑estate assets (e.g., plazas, hotels) using leverage and co‑investors, and joining private‑equity or investor clubs that provide access to vetted private SaaS businesses with 20‑50%+ cash‑on‑cash returns. He briefly plugs Horizon Capital’s investor club. For active investing, he advises using the capital, time, and expertise to acquire or take leadership roles in private companies, leveraging the larger capital base to access $10‑50 million deals, employing debt and additional investors, and applying a repeat‑and‑scale playbook to grow the portfolio from $1 million to $10 million and beyond. Throughout, he stresses deep due‑diligence, understanding the business, and the importance of generating economic value. The video ends with a call for viewers to comment on how they would invest a million dollars, and a standard YouTube CTA to like, subscribe, and hit the bell.
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Hey guys, welcome back to the SaaS District show on my YouTube channel. Thank you again for watching. Today we're going to talk about where would I invest $1 million in 2021. My previous videos, if you remember watching, I talked about where would I invest $10,000. Then I made another video on where would I invest $100,000. So now I'm talking about where would I invest $1 million. And remember guys, this is, this is your options when you're not leaving in the bank because sitting in the bank you know, you're not getting a lot of interest, right? You're getting 1, 2% maybe per year, and inflation is going to eat that up and you're going to actually be losing money on your investments. You want to find areas where you can grow your return and get something like 20%, even 30%, or even more on your investment so you can make the most of that capital and generate, you know, higher returns and continue to grow your income. So let's get into this video, guys, and I'll share with you my insights. Hey guys, welcome back to another video. My name is Akeel Jabbar, Investment Director and GP at Horizon Capital, where we work with entrepreneurs, startups, and investors to acquire, build, sell, and grow their SaaS businesses. And today's video, like I said, I'm going to be talking about how would I invest $1 million, right? If you've got $1 million sitting in your bank account, you've got to put that money to use, right? We're in 2021 where people need money to be influxed in back into the economy to grow the economy and put that money to work so society can get back to work and start producing for the country, right? So obviously there's so much things you can do with that money. You can leave it there, not the best option, put under your, under your mattress. I think that's a, that's a massive mattress. So what So like my other videos, I always talk about where should I put it? Should I put it in active investments or should I put it in passive investments? And I'll talk about a few different areas. And the point of these investments I'm talking about are actually going to generate, you know, high returns. I'm not talking about, you know, GICs or, you know, 5% returns that you can put in other places or investing in the stock market, for example. These are areas where you're going to generate high returns. I'm talking double digits, right? So let's talk about passive first. I always like to start with the passive investments because they don't take a lot of your time. You've got $1 million, you probably don't want to put a lot of your time into something unless it's really worth your effort and energy and you're really excited to put that money to work and work on it. So the passive ways, it's all about talking, you know, stepping up, leveling up the type of investment, just like playing Monopoly, right? You start off with the small house, then you move up to a bigger house, then you move up into the hotel, then you move up into bigger, you know, better neighborhoods. And that's kind of the whole part of this is like, okay, you start leveling up and building and building and bigger. Building until you have more cash to buy bigger and better assets. So at this stage, when you have $1 million on the passive side, we talked about real estate. You're no longer doing, you know, small residential. You're not doing single property units. You're not doing multi-units, whether it's like, you know, fourplex or condos. At this point, you probably want to look at commercial real estate, right? So you want to buy, you know, a plaza. Maybe you want to buy an entire building, right? So maybe the building costs $10, $20 million, and that can be part of a bigger fund. You know, at this point you want to use that leverage, find other investors, pool that capital together, work with a bigger group, you know, and then infusing debt into this deal where that million dollars can now buy a $20 million hotel, a bigger, you know, building that could be a commercial plaza. Like, those are the type of investments you want to be looking at. But same thing here, you want to use leverage, and I'm always about using leverage to take that million and using part of debt. Now you might want to use, you know, find some other investors in there as well, and then together you're able to buy a bigger property and obviously generate better returns at this point. So that's on the real estate side. Uh, the next side that I would look at is private businesses, and what I mean specifically is part of a fund, right? So this is probably— you probably haven't thought about, but there's some private investments you can make through, for example, a private equity fund, or for example, we at Horizon Capital have a investment clubs. So you can try to join some of these clubs where you get access to some really high-quality deals, high-quality investments, and companies that you can add to your portfolio where there's already a management in place, where there's already expertise in place. And these are private deals that are not made to the public like the publicly traded markets, like on the stock exchange, right? In this scenario, these are private companies that nobody knows about, or very few people know about. And if you're able to get access to these deals You should be able to get, you know, 20, 30, even 50% ROI returns, cash on cash, to get that money back as quickly as possible. Here's the shameless plug-in that comes into play. Obviously, if you guys are looking for investing with us at the— on, you know, as part of the investor club, I'll put the link below. You can check that out, you can apply. If you're a good fit, we'll reach out and see if we can get you involved in some of our next deals. It's part of our upcoming next investments in SaaS companies that we acquire. So that's on the passive side. Next one I'll talk about is always about the active investment, right? So that's the next type of investment is like, okay, I've got $1 million. I want to put the money to use, but I also put my time to use. So I want to leverage my time, my energy, my expertise, and my capital. So you have all these combined. All right, let's put this money to use. Same thing, use that leverage. Find ways how do you use that leverage. And when you have $1 million, you now have access to a lot more of opportunities, right? You can find businesses up to doing, you know, $10 million, right? Maybe you're finding a company, uh, same thing as when you're doing like a piece of real estate, for example, like a hotel. You want to find debt and you want to find investors, other investors, and you want to be part of a bigger pool here. So now you can go out and buy $20 million companies, $50 million companies, because you have access to, you know, more capital. And you're going to get respect of other people on the same level of you who have $1 million Together you can go out and, you know, lenders are a lot more willing to work with you when you have that type of capital to deploy. Same thing as before, invest in what you understand, right? That's super, super important. It doesn't matter if you have $1, $100, $10 million, or $100 billion. You know, Warren Buffett still does the same thing. He only— he goes deep into the businesses, literally understands every, you know, reads all the letters, reads all the financials, understands. He goes, talks to people on the board until he fully understands the company, the market, the team, the dynamics of the company, what's changing in the market before he makes any investment decision. And you've got to think about the same thing. It doesn't matter on the amount you're investing. He's just doing it at a higher level. So you can do this in a couple of ways. Like I said, you can buy a private company yourself. At this point, $10 million, there's a lot bigger opportunities. These are companies that have management teams in place. They have a strong CEO in place. Maybe they're just looking for an exit part of their— they're just looking to exit, move on, or maybe some of their shareholders or their investors want to sell. There's a lot of these opportunities you have to look for kind of on the private side. But if you can find it, you're going to get a lot better returns on your million dollars. So if you can find these companies and you can come in and take on the role of the CEO or president or, you know, or even on a board seat level and being part of investor, I think you'll get a lot more return on your investment if you're able to drive the growth using your expertise to take the business to the next level. So it's not unheard of if you know what you're doing. With these type of investments to get, you know, even 50%. I've heard even, you know, 100+% returns where you can get back your money within a year or 2. Take it, do the same thing, and find that kind of that rinse and repeat model where you're getting that— you invest $1 million, you get your $1 million back in a year or 2, and then you take that and continue to do that over and over until you're able to build that massive portfolio. So it's all at this point, it's all about building your portfolio, I think. Start with the one and then, you know, get back that money as quickly as possible. Repeat it for the next one until you're able to build that portfolio. Now take that $1 million to hopefully at least $10 million and make future investments. So there you have it, guys. That's my opinion. That's what I think where I would invest $1 million. Obviously everybody has their own opinion on what, how they do it, but you've got to put that money to work. You've got to make more money than you can. And there's no better place than private businesses who employ people, who generate jobs, you know, help the economy. Help the people, add value to the world, and obviously helps you as the investor to get better money in return. So there you go, guys. Hope you guys enjoyed this video. So tell me, guys, if you had a million dollars, I know the first answer everybody's gonna say: I'm gonna go buy a Tesla. I'm gonna go travel the world. That's not what I'm talking about here. I want to hear where would you invest it to make more money on your money. If you've got better ideas, love to hear from you. Let me know in the comments below. If you like this, if you like this video, like it, subscribe. And smash the bell button. I'll see you guys on the next video.
