Hacker News Reader

Comment by Quintus_ | Hacker News Reader

Is it likely that I (and other Andrew Ng 'fans') will be able to buy stock in his company?

I would also love to but extremely unlikely, crowdsource bureaucracy is a nightmare and he won't have problems raising that much.

He will be issuing the NG coin in an ICO ...

there is usually a minimum investment amount. for a fund of this size, im guessing it would be around $5m

I find this really frustrating about tech investing. Much of the early investment opportunities are only available to the richest. It's an insider's game.

It's not unique to tech, but it's necessary for funds of this size. Let's say Andrew's entire fund is made up of $5m investors. That means he has to close at least 30 investors, which means he probably has to pitch 60-90. Not only that, but actively maintaining 30 relationships and making sure they are effectively informed of the funds progress is difficult and time consuming as well. Andrew's time is probably best spent working with portfolio companies on their tech, so the less time he has to spend courting and showing love to LP's the better.

That's why they limit investment size. It's not to be purposefully exclusionary, they just have to be mindful of efficient use of time.

I don't think it is not unique to tech investing, but it is true for all small companies.

Or big companies. If you wanted a chance to profit from Snap, Square, Twitter or (coming soon) Pinterest, you had to be a high level investor.

I believe most regulations that block this kind of investment are done in the name of protecting the little guy.

They are done in order to protect the little guy, due to the high risk associated with the high reward.

Otherwise, you will get people that have negative net worth, maybe $20k in credit card debt + student loans that they pay minimums on, and a few kids dumping a year of savings into Snapchat and losing it all.

While it sucks for small players that are ok with high risk investing (and would be ok losing it), there just isn't a way to stop the flood of stupid that would come with it.

Probably the closest thing I've seen to being able to invest in something like this is cryptocurrecy,

Reply on news.ycombinator.com