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This is pretty amazing. Gary Tan made a YT video about his experience backing them very early and getting a 6000x return: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5YAp

This is pretty amazing. Gary Tan made a YT video about his experience backing them very early and getting a 6000x return: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5YApjnTG10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5YApjnTG10 It's remarkable that Brian Armstrong gave up what would have been very valuable options in Airbnb—the most valuable YC company at the time—to found a new company that surpassed it.

cableshaft 6y ago
Wow. Assuming he put in just $10,000 (and I imagine it was probably more than that), 6000x return would be 60 million dollars. Any early companies out there right now seem like it could potentially offer even a 10th of that in ~5-10 years?
- pinkybanana 6y ago
  Well I bought BTC at $1 and so did many others, now it trades at $60k...
  - KitDuncan 6y ago
    but did you hold it this long?
  - randomopining 6y ago
    Did you cash in and get filthy rich? Or sell too early and mad ragrets.
    - hndamien 6y ago
      Rich with ragrets rather than filthy rich.
      - randomopining 6y ago
        Damn, no ragrets. Yo but how does it feel to be moderately rich off of crypto? I wonder if anything would change besides not having to work.
        hndamien 6y ago
        This is the biggest difference. Just not a constant stress of keeping up to ensure survival and fulfilment for the family. Now I wonder how best to allocate time and capital, and I have not come up with good answers yet, so I'm still working until I have a better answer. So really all that has changed is mental space has less stress, and I have a much more appropriate family car.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- maxlamb 6y ago
  He actually put in $300k, so his shares are worth around 2.4 billion now
  - janandonly 6y ago
    Did he? If he simply bought bitcoins with his $300.000 in 2012 (average bitcoin price of $8) then his net worth now would be .... 37500 bitcoins or $2.362.500.000 ... 2 point 3 billion frigging dollars...
    - pinkybanana 6y ago
      It is actually interesting thought pattern, which would be better investment? With owning private equity there is also lots of work involved I would guess, with BTC you just sit on it... Latter is of course very hard in volatile market, while PE you probably can't liquidate.
    - lpapez 6y ago
      In theory yes. In practice, cashing out billions of dollars worth of stocks is easier than cashing out billions of dollars worth of crypto.
      - rawtxapp 6y ago
        You wouldn't be selling those on the open market, institutions have been able to acquire billions of dollars worth of crypto OTC without moving markets. Another option is, now that it's becoming clear to people that Bitcoin is here to stay, you can just borrow against it to spend (avoid taxes, hold on to the upside). Case in point, this person/group borrowed 300M$ with about 1B$ net worth[1]. 1: https://defiexplore.com/cdp/8463 https://defiexplore.com/cdp/8463
        pushrax 6y ago
        I'm new to this. Is the collateral locked into the contract and unspendable until the contract is closed? It's also kind of unclear what the interest is from that page. edit: apparently it's 8.5% https://mkr.tools/governance/stabilityfee https://mkr.tools/governance/stabilityfee
- paulpauper 6y ago
  i dunno how people say VCs have a return of only 9% year when Ycombinator is absolutely crushing that even with a high failure rate. AirBNB, box, dropbox, coinbase, etc. Paul stumbled on an absolute goldmine by just giving a bunch of promising companies with good founders 10k in exchange for a decent portion of equity and then some of these companies being worth billions. NOw you know what those homes and are so expensive in Palo Also and elsehwre, You got of these guys making fortunes, and that money tricked down everywhere.
  - mgfist 6y ago
    There are a lot of VCs out there. Some do well, some don't. But remember that unlike the stock market, investing in a VC means locking up your money for 10 years. Slightly beating the market is not worth the liquidity loss, you have to do a good bit better.
    - cableshaft 6y ago
      Yeah I get it, assuming I did it (which is a big, big if, I don't really trust my judgement to pick winning companies or there being some legal jiggery pokery or bad luck that makes me get nothing or almost nothing back), it would be something I do in addition to buying crypto/gold/silver and putting money into a 401k.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    > i dunno how people say VCs have a return of only 9% year when Ycombinator is absolutely crushing that even with a high failure rate YC is a massive outlier and they have insanely good deal flow because of their brand.
    - jm20 6y ago
      *and the people running it. The brand comes from the success of the companies which comes, in large part, because of the partners and network. You won't find a better group of truly qualified, highly accomplished people giving advice to startups, holding talks for cohorts, etc. in any other accelerator anywhere, period.
pinkybanana 6y ago
Airbnb market cap is at 105 billion and Coinbase is currently at 86. Personally I'm very sceptical that current valuation for Coinbase is justified. It is a great company for sure but there definitely arent similar network effects as with Airbnb. There's plenty of competition in the crypto exchange space.
- sekai 6y ago
  oh boy, wait until you hear about Tesla
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. It causes threads to go to repetitive (and often inflammatory) places, which is a failure mode for HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- paulpauper 6y ago
  also airbnb is not dependent on the value of a speculative asset. There will always be demand for rentals.
  - kneel 6y ago
    There is 20 trillion of negative yielding debt floating around in govt bonds, luckily we can hedge against these horribly mismanaged house of cards before they fall on us. The demand is real.
    - enjo 6y ago
      Bitcoin is worthless without dollars backing it. It’s because you can turn Bitcoin into dollars that anyone wants it.
      - thebean11 6y ago
        You can make the same argument about any asset class. The path from Bitcoin/gold/real estate/crops to other goods or assets goes through dollars out of convenience (because your destination is purchasable in dollars). Don't confuse convenience with necessity.
janandonly 6y ago
And in Brian had simply bought bitcoins with his $10.000 in 2012, when the price was $4-$12 per piece? He could have bought 833-2500 bitcoins, with a current value of $5.2500.000 - $157.500.000. He choose to do more than "HODL" and go through the hard work of building a product and a company, which in my book, makes him a true hero. Even though he went the casino/shitcoin rout later...
- dnr 6y ago
  Would bitcoin be worth nearly as much as it now if Coinbase didn't exist?
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    Plenty of exchanges out there, so I would say yes.
    - paulpauper 6y ago
      but Gemini is the only other regulated US one. Coinbase is huge, even bigger than binance. Something like 50 million ppl have an account. Ppl wondered why the July 2020 Twitter hacker made so little. The reason is, coinabse blocked withdrawals to the hacker address, which if they hadn't, the hackers would have made 3x more..so let that sink in..
      - thebean11 6y ago
        Isn't Kraken also based in the US? Last I heard they're in the process of getting a bank charter.
      - koonsolo 6y ago
        Sure, Google is also huge. Would that mean there is no search engine market when they wouldn't have been there? Coinbase is huge because of the user demand, not the other way around.
  - rvn1045 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
You-Are-Right 6y ago
How does this help with climate change?
purple_ferret 6y ago
There's something pretty surreal about an actual multi-billionaire running the youtube investor guru schtick.
- ceres 6y ago
  You know it's possible for people to start YouTube channels as a hobby/side project/whatever. Not everyone with a YouTube channel is trying to scam you. Billionaires are people too. Justin Kan has a YouTube channel for example. You should check it out :-)
- barnabees 6y ago
  At least he's not selling a course
  - seriousquestion 6y ago
    "How I Made $2B By Doing Almost Nothing", on sale now for a limited time. Only $19.99! Order today. And don't forget to like and subscribe. That would really help me out.
    - jm20 6y ago
      The better title would be "How I made $2B on an educated $300k bet" because even the best startup investors will tell you that investing that early is essentially betting. And early-stage help and intros are crucial for startups - between YC and Garry's network I'm sure a ton of that contributed to their success as well. At the end of the day still a bet, but just saying.
      - seriousquestion 6y ago
        You're right, that would be a better title.

cableshaft 6y ago

Wow. Assuming he put in just $10,000 (and I imagine it was probably more than that), 6000x return would be 60 million dollars. Any early companies out there right now seem like it could potentially offer even a 10th of that in ~5-10 years?

pinkybanana 6y ago
Well I bought BTC at $1 and so did many others, now it trades at $60k...
- KitDuncan 6y ago
  but did you hold it this long?
- randomopining 6y ago
  Did you cash in and get filthy rich? Or sell too early and mad ragrets.
  - hndamien 6y ago
    Rich with ragrets rather than filthy rich.
    - randomopining 6y ago
      Damn, no ragrets. Yo but how does it feel to be moderately rich off of crypto? I wonder if anything would change besides not having to work.
      - hndamien 6y ago
        This is the biggest difference. Just not a constant stress of keeping up to ensure survival and fulfilment for the family. Now I wonder how best to allocate time and capital, and I have not come up with good answers yet, so I'm still working until I have a better answer. So really all that has changed is mental space has less stress, and I have a much more appropriate family car.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
maxlamb 6y ago
He actually put in $300k, so his shares are worth around 2.4 billion now
- janandonly 6y ago
  Did he? If he simply bought bitcoins with his $300.000 in 2012 (average bitcoin price of $8) then his net worth now would be .... 37500 bitcoins or $2.362.500.000 ... 2 point 3 billion frigging dollars...
  - pinkybanana 6y ago
    It is actually interesting thought pattern, which would be better investment? With owning private equity there is also lots of work involved I would guess, with BTC you just sit on it... Latter is of course very hard in volatile market, while PE you probably can't liquidate.
  - lpapez 6y ago
    In theory yes. In practice, cashing out billions of dollars worth of stocks is easier than cashing out billions of dollars worth of crypto.
    - rawtxapp 6y ago
      You wouldn't be selling those on the open market, institutions have been able to acquire billions of dollars worth of crypto OTC without moving markets. Another option is, now that it's becoming clear to people that Bitcoin is here to stay, you can just borrow against it to spend (avoid taxes, hold on to the upside). Case in point, this person/group borrowed 300M$ with about 1B$ net worth[1]. 1: https://defiexplore.com/cdp/8463 https://defiexplore.com/cdp/8463
      - pushrax 6y ago
        I'm new to this. Is the collateral locked into the contract and unspendable until the contract is closed? It's also kind of unclear what the interest is from that page. edit: apparently it's 8.5% https://mkr.tools/governance/stabilityfee https://mkr.tools/governance/stabilityfee
paulpauper 6y ago
i dunno how people say VCs have a return of only 9% year when Ycombinator is absolutely crushing that even with a high failure rate. AirBNB, box, dropbox, coinbase, etc. Paul stumbled on an absolute goldmine by just giving a bunch of promising companies with good founders 10k in exchange for a decent portion of equity and then some of these companies being worth billions. NOw you know what those homes and are so expensive in Palo Also and elsehwre, You got of these guys making fortunes, and that money tricked down everywhere.
- mgfist 6y ago
  There are a lot of VCs out there. Some do well, some don't. But remember that unlike the stock market, investing in a VC means locking up your money for 10 years. Slightly beating the market is not worth the liquidity loss, you have to do a good bit better.
  - cableshaft 6y ago
    Yeah I get it, assuming I did it (which is a big, big if, I don't really trust my judgement to pick winning companies or there being some legal jiggery pokery or bad luck that makes me get nothing or almost nothing back), it would be something I do in addition to buying crypto/gold/silver and putting money into a 401k.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  > i dunno how people say VCs have a return of only 9% year when Ycombinator is absolutely crushing that even with a high failure rate YC is a massive outlier and they have insanely good deal flow because of their brand.
  - jm20 6y ago
    *and the people running it. The brand comes from the success of the companies which comes, in large part, because of the partners and network. You won't find a better group of truly qualified, highly accomplished people giving advice to startups, holding talks for cohorts, etc. in any other accelerator anywhere, period.

pinkybanana 6y ago

Airbnb market cap is at 105 billion and Coinbase is currently at 86. Personally I'm very sceptical that current valuation for Coinbase is justified. It is a great company for sure but there definitely arent similar network effects as with Airbnb. There's plenty of competition in the crypto exchange space.

sekai 6y ago
oh boy, wait until you hear about Tesla
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. It causes threads to go to repetitive (and often inflammatory) places, which is a failure mode for HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
paulpauper 6y ago
also airbnb is not dependent on the value of a speculative asset. There will always be demand for rentals.
- kneel 6y ago
  There is 20 trillion of negative yielding debt floating around in govt bonds, luckily we can hedge against these horribly mismanaged house of cards before they fall on us. The demand is real.
  - enjo 6y ago
    Bitcoin is worthless without dollars backing it. It’s because you can turn Bitcoin into dollars that anyone wants it.
    - thebean11 6y ago
      You can make the same argument about any asset class. The path from Bitcoin/gold/real estate/crops to other goods or assets goes through dollars out of convenience (because your destination is purchasable in dollars). Don't confuse convenience with necessity.

janandonly 6y ago

And in Brian had simply bought bitcoins with his $10.000 in 2012, when the price was $4-$12 per piece? He could have bought 833-2500 bitcoins, with a current value of $5.2500.000 - $157.500.000. He choose to do more than "HODL" and go through the hard work of building a product and a company, which in my book, makes him a true hero. Even though he went the casino/shitcoin rout later...

dnr 6y ago
Would bitcoin be worth nearly as much as it now if Coinbase didn't exist?
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Plenty of exchanges out there, so I would say yes.
  - paulpauper 6y ago
    but Gemini is the only other regulated US one. Coinbase is huge, even bigger than binance. Something like 50 million ppl have an account. Ppl wondered why the July 2020 Twitter hacker made so little. The reason is, coinabse blocked withdrawals to the hacker address, which if they hadn't, the hackers would have made 3x more..so let that sink in..
    - thebean11 6y ago
      Isn't Kraken also based in the US? Last I heard they're in the process of getting a bank charter.
    - koonsolo 6y ago
      Sure, Google is also huge. Would that mean there is no search engine market when they wouldn't have been there? Coinbase is huge because of the user demand, not the other way around.
- rvn1045 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

You-Are-Right 6y ago

How does this help with climate change?

purple_ferret 6y ago

There's something pretty surreal about an actual multi-billionaire running the youtube investor guru schtick.

ceres 6y ago
You know it's possible for people to start YouTube channels as a hobby/side project/whatever. Not everyone with a YouTube channel is trying to scam you. Billionaires are people too. Justin Kan has a YouTube channel for example. You should check it out :-)
barnabees 6y ago
At least he's not selling a course
- seriousquestion 6y ago
  "How I Made $2B By Doing Almost Nothing", on sale now for a limited time. Only $19.99! Order today. And don't forget to like and subscribe. That would really help me out.
  - jm20 6y ago
    The better title would be "How I made $2B on an educated $300k bet" because even the best startup investors will tell you that investing that early is essentially betting. And early-stage help and intros are crucial for startups - between YC and Garry's network I'm sure a ton of that contributed to their success as well. At the end of the day still a bet, but just saying.
    - seriousquestion 6y ago
      You're right, that would be a better title.