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Comment by megaremote | Hacker News Reader

> I like Apple's strategy better of sitting on piles of cash until they know what to do with it.

This is exactly the wrong strategy. Money is nothing compared to investing in business'.

Unless it is "diworsification," where companies or individuals water down successful investments with tons of bad ones.

A bit like Daimler-Benz between 1985-95 when they tried to get into aerospace and electronics under CEO Edzard Reuter, which failed miserably and cost the company around 25 Billion dollars. Some called it the biggest destruction of capital in Germany in peacetime

GM, which was perhaps the most powerful corporation on earth at the time, made the exact same mistakes. They bought Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems. They bought Hughes Aircraft (Hughes Electronics, DirecTV, etc). That was all in the mid 1980s at the end of GM's run when they had no idea what to do with their position and riches (the Japanese would solve that 'problem' for them shortly thereafter).

I guess at some value of money the best way is to just create a hedge fund, and put your riches into diversified instruments. Sure it won't give you exponentially increasing riches, but at least you will likely see a percent or two worth returns above inflation. And given how big the money would be, it would workout just fine.

Also its just plain scary how much money one can lose and quickly.

The fusion between Daimler and Chrysler has been estimated to cost 75 billion and failed too. It was a complete disaster in the name of "shareholder value"

I'm sure they have it invested in bonds or some minimal appreciating investment to fight inflation.

Many businesses have headed south by expanding into less profitable or unfamiliar business segments.

Yea apple has like $200b+ in us treasuries, corporate bonds, etc.

They own their own asset management company, which last year managed $268bn: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital

Investopedia says the largest hedge fund in the world last year had $122bn under management: https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-are-biggest-hedge-fun...

I'm guessing they exclude Apple because it's private and outside investors can't invest in it, but Apple's is twice as big as the biggest public one.

Apple's wealth is staggering, but I take solace in the fact that the wealth is spread out quite a bit with the largest individual shareholder only having around a million shared.

The largest institutional shareholders are Berkshire Hathaway and vanguard, which are also owned by lots of investors and have minority stakes.

I worry a bit more about large companies with individuals who have outsized control (like Amazon or Facebook).

That's not always the case. It is better to sit on cash than buy a business and have it be a flop. Everything has to be a calculated strategy, not simply a matter of buy everything and hope it works out for the best.

Nothing about Amazons growth suggests a 'buy it all and hope' mentality. Quite the opposite: Amazons strategic positioning in multiple aligned markets gives them a very real chance at creating significant sustained competitive advantages.

Whole Foods 2030 is gonna be darned hard to compete with without your own cabal of smart app developers, AI assistants, world class delivery infrastructure, and a massive captive subscriber base. And that's before we consider value adds (get anything from Amazon along with your groceries, get your lifestyle groceries via subscriptions, buying whole coordinated lifestyle blocks of products), and, oh yeah, maybe the greatest logistical management system the world has ever seen.

Amazon is making the undies of many a board member chocolate brown for good reason. Because of what Amazon is, Amazon can become very, very, scary in new markets in a short time.

It will be darned hard to compete in the high end markets that whole foods serve. But big players like Walmart already have a strong hold in the lower end markets that won't be affected by whole foods.

Yeah, if they get it right. Google, Apple, etc. have all stumbled trying to make a splash in a new market. They've of course had wild successes too. Seems premature to portray Whole Foods 2030 as practically unbeatable.

There are so many things that need to go right and for Amazon as a company it'll be their first time in a large scale brick and mortar retail economy.

Sure they could hit a home run but I don't think it's a guarantee.

Definitely, and the only way to get there is to keep experimenting even at a large scale. I think Bezos mentions it quite a bit that a lot of larger companies don't get (because they are most of the time not founder controlled and run), as you get larger you have to make larger and larger bets.

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