An entrepreneur argues that starting a business has a 75% failure rate, while buying stock in companies run by successful founders like Jobs, Bezos, and Musk lets you own their value creation without the operational risk. Investing in the stock market is a more accessible path to wealth for people in their 20s and 30s.
If you were to simplify for someone in their 20s or 30s who's never invested before on how to invest and what to invest in, what would you share with them? As if you were teaching someone that had no understanding of what investing or the stock market or trading meant, and you could simplify that, what would that look like?
Well, so I think a better way to think about it is there's something that we all can relate to is the idea of starting a company, right? We all want to be entrepreneurs, not all, most of us in the back of our head, it would be cool to, you know, own your own company, whatever that company is, right? It never used to be like that. But over the last 20 years, now we all kind of think like that. I don't care if you're a celebrity, if you're a homemaker, there's a company out there that you would like to start and own for the idea of being an entrepreneur? Well, that's half of my life, right? I'm an entrepreneur. I've been in startups my entire career. I've started a multitude of companies, have sold them. I've had a few big successes in that world, and I've had an insane number of failures in that world, both as an operator and as an investor in private companies. I would say for most people, it's insane to go out and start your own company ever. And I've done it. I've done it multiple times.
Why is it insane to start your own company?
Because you're almost definitely going to fail. When I said 75%, that's 75% of my portfolio that were deeply vetted and I'm pretty good at doing what I do. Almost all companies will just fail. If you go to start a company, almost definitely you're going to fail.
Even the ones that succeed maybe aren't making a lot of money. It's just getting by, it's breaking even, it's like 5%, it's not making a ton where you're getting rich.
There are a near infinite number of ways for a founder to fail. Okay, no, put that aside. Being an investor, just generally being an investor, investing in stocks, investing in the market. This is what's so wild. You could actually go out and invest in the smartest people in the world. You can invest in Steve Jobs back in the day, right? You can invest in Jeff Bezos. You can invest, you might hate Zuckerberg, but you can invest in Mark Zuckerberg if you want, right? Sam Altman, Elon Musk. Right? Like whoever it is, like you don't have to try to be them. You could just literally just throw some money and just ride their life, right? Just like anything they create, any value that they create in this world, you could just get paid for all the stuff that they're doing. Like we don't ever think like that, but you could do that.
