Building the Empire
There are mechanisms and ways of thinking to how large fortunes are put together. We are going to kick the tires on Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Mike Novogratz, and a few others. At certain levels of scale, a number of strategies just stop working. For example, financial literacy and responsible budgeting is going to get you out of debt and into a reasonable personal situation. This will work for millions and billions of people. But if you want to generate empire-building cashflow, there is not enough coffee in the world you can choose to not buy (e.g., $4.00 times 365 is $1,460). Next up is the advice of the venture capitalist. Remember, a venture investor is taking portfolio bets on highly concentrated positions, of which 90% will fail and 10% will return billions of dollars. In such a world, the investor wants each bet to have the highest expected return. A 5% chance of $1 billion is worth $50 million. A 25% chance of $100 million is worth $25 million. The lower probability event w...