A short YouTube piece by Codie Sanchez that introduces the idea of "venture zombie investing": buying failing startups (often after original investors are wiped out) for pennies on the dollar and attempting turnarounds. The clip cites Sanchez's friend Andrew as an exemplar who became nearly a billionaire using cap-table swipes to acquire distressed startups.
Chapters
My friend became a billionaire almost with this simple idea. I like to call it venture zombie investing. Venture capitalists invest billions and billions of dollars a year trying to find the next Elon or Bezos. But it turns out there's not very many of them. In fact, there are only about a thousand unicorns or billion dollar companies in the world. So this means each year tens of millions of companies take a bunch of investment cash and basically light it on fire. Some of these companies never make much of anything, so the company can continue zombie until they run out of cash. Or my friend Andrew steps in. He does what's called a cap table swipe, where he gets rid of old investors, buys the companies for pennies on the dollar, and gives them a chance to potentially earn back their money. If it runs well, it's a win win. So good, in fact, Andrew's been compared to the Warren Buffett of our generation. I want to steal his homework. So where all around you are there a bunch of failing startups that you could potentially buy for pennies on the dollar and scoop it up?