A founder made $10 million by 30 but felt like a failure because peers earned more. He poured money into other startups assuming good ideas guaranteed returns, then watched most collapse. He learned that public markets offer audited financials and accountability that private bets don't, and that execution matters more than the idea.
I made $10 million before I turned 30, but I still felt like a failure. And that was because I still had all of these reference points for all these other people who made even more money than me. I was focused on one thing, and it was being as successful as I possibly could. I over indexed in one area of my life at the expense of other areas of my life. The dumbest thing that I've invested my money in is other people's startups. I used to thumb my nose at Wall street and think, oh, all these fat cats just want to make their money off the backs of us hardworking entrepreneurs. And then I started investing in startups and saw most of them go to zero. And I was like, oh, you know what? Wall street actually has its benefits, like audited financials, and they have to be accountable to the public and it's super liquid. Good ideas are crap. It's all about the entrepreneur's ability to execute. And I bet money on people's ideas rather than their ability to execute, and that resulted in millions of dollars lost.
