My Great Migration From Public To Private Markets

Until recently, I loved counting my chips.

When I was younger I was obsessed with math. Math came easy to me.

I left home at a young age and never went back so I was always obsessed with counting my money because I had to make ends meet. Lucky credit was easy because there was no way I could have survived.

I was addicted to Quicken in my early work days to keep my cash flow balanced with all the credit cards.

Once I started to earn enough where I cold save, I started investing in stocks. After building up a bit of a nest egg at a startup I helped run, I started a hedge fund. What better way to count money 24/7. It was so efficient.

Forget that I was driving myself and everyone else mad.

After starting Wallstrip in 2006 and being acquired by CBS, everything changed.

I got comfortable and confident investing my money in other startups. I could not count it anymore.

Slowly, as Social Leverage has grown and invested over 13 plus years, I don’t have a majority of my money in the stock market. I find myself much happier.

My returns have increased significantly as well.

At the beginning of this year, Josh Brown and Brian Portnoy asked me to contribute a chapter to their book ‘How I Invest My Money’.

I did. You can order it here.

The great migration from public markets to private markets is ‘a thing’ in 2020. That said, public markets are still 80x bigger than VC!

I believe the internet will continue to accelerate investors moving to private markets. The public markets for digital first companies at public company size can’t happen fast enough and the large part of the ‘value’/’land based’ side of the public markets will get hot potatoed between private equity firms.

Patrick O’Shaugnessy dove into this topic with Michael Mauboussin in his latest podcast and I will listen on my bike ride this morning.

Here is the link.

Have a great Labor Day weekend.