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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

> was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business

What? How? He built an 8b business with 16b in investment. Anyone can do that. Take 16b, put it in index funds, call yourself an investment bank. You'd get better returns than -50%, for sure.

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Not just anyone gets 16b of funding to lose 50% on it. You need to be a very charismatic CEO - maybe borderline cult-leader status

I think you also need some "special" investors. In this case softbank appreciated the crazyness of the CEO.

Yes, but don't forget that those "special" investors were funded by even richer, special-er investors.

Softbank funded WeWork via the Vision fund, which is primarily funded with Saudi money.

ANYONE can lose that kind of money - that's the point they were getting at.

No need to be pedantic.

Right but we're assessing the quality of the business he built. It's crap. That doesn't change with what the parent said.

and there you have hit the nail on the head

Or as Matt Levine might say, take the $16b, light half of it on fire, and put the other half under your mattress. Boom: You've just beaten negative interest rates.

I'd love to see you try. It's easy to turn $20 into $40, but as you approach larger numbers it keeps getting harder.

He's saying you can do better than turning $40 into $20 at scale. He's not saying he will double the investment - only that he won't lose half of it.

Completely untrue. Even if all you do is take advantage of the investment opportunities that someone with, say, a million dollars get access to that someone with 20 doesn't, it's easy to grow large amounts of money.

"To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn 100 million into $110 million is inevitable". Edgar Bronfman

So you have a good argument, but that basically means all that stands between someone making $10million is getting the credit to start their business? I’d love to offer you that credit and take half your profits after interest and taxes.

No, I said no such thing, and borrowing money is different than having money.

I guess I just don't know what you're saying then. It's easy to make money if you already have it? Maybe in terms of quantity, but in terms of % return i don't feel the ease of producing a return is really super linear or logical.

Looks like you've got it backward - as long as your $16b doesn't turn into $8b (negative fifty percent), you're doing better than this guy. If you put the $16b in any kind of mutual find, you're going to get a positive return, even if it's a single digit percentage, and it'll be much better than this guy.

Overall I agree with the point, but I was considering the idea of risk and the stock market, and I looked at what kind of return you would get if you invested in a major index at a peak and sold at the low point, and historically it's been in the ballpark of -70%.

So the odds are lower and the timescale is longer, but you could still lose more, potentially.

The issue i have with all these arguments is that while you can turn x into 2x, when you layer on interest, taxes, and any fees you encounter in the process...your cut won’t be what you thought it was going to be. Making money isn’t cheap and anyone who thinks it is hasn’t actually tried to do it yet.

That's a negative 70% in the worst case. I wasn't talking about making 70%.

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