Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluntfang | Hacker News Reader

>...their good decisions...

I think saying this is disingenuous. It's not about good decisions. I bet if we looked at these people's portfolios it would be diversified to cover pretty much every bet. They are able to do this solely because they already have money. There is no good decision that me or you could make that would have the same outcome.

View on HN

Diversification does not guarantee returns here. The majority of companies in their portfolio are likely to be worthless. A $400 million venture fund is often lucky to own 20% of a 'unicorn' $1 billion company, and they would need two of those just to break even. Look at the stats and it is far from a sure-bet even if they have the money.

"good decisions to be involved"

You can also make good decisions with your money, and bad ones. Those can pay off, or not.

The investors here didn't make "good" or "bad" decisions, though. They just diversified their investments such that they can have an EV of millions of dollars even if most of their investments fail. That's not a thing most of us can do — not because we make decisions that don't pay off, but because we don't have enough money to even get in the game.

Having a diversified portfolio is a good decision.

Having a diversified portfolio on the magnitude of these investors is impossible for literally 99.99% of the US population.

That doesn't negate the fact that it's a good decision.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com