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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

The end result of this strategy seems like “invest in Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Z and Bill Gates”. Doesn’t sound very contrarian.

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And do so with the clarity of hindisght.

If you had invested in Facebook or Tesla around their IPO you would be a contrarian though. Facebook less so than Tesla maybe, but not a lot of people seemed to believe that they would stick around.

By the very nature of an IPO there is basically 1 seller the company (and in many cases the insiders) who are selling to 10's or 100's of thousands of buyers, private and institutional.

Hint: The contrarian here is not the thousands of people/institutions/funds buying on the float.

It depends on how many would want to invest in those companies and how many wouldn't. If you have 10000 buyers but 100000 that wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole then those 10000 buyers are still contrarians. (Partly) cashing out isn't by definition contrarian.

Having 0 position is not the opposite of having 100 shares; -100 shares is the opposite.

By your definition owning an iPhone is contrarian, because there are only 1billion people with iPhones.

Contrarian just means holding a position the majority doesn't hold. Although reality is not that clearcut as you aptly pointed out. Most investors didn't think Facebook or Tesla were good investments, hence investing in those stocks is a contrarian position.

To use your example, I would consider choosing to not use a smartphone to be a contrarian position while having an iPhone is not.

That's the whole point, you invest in people once they've had significant traction. I think Dustin Moskovitz is a strong candidate, along with Brian Armstrong and as mentioned earlier Max Levchin and Jack Dorsey. PG's YC and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund are only accessible to HNWIs. If you can get your hands on secondary shares, Patrick Collison, Parker Conrad and Ryan Peterson would be at the top of my list. Last but not least, I bet that Mikhail Kokorich will go public again, despite all the turbulence.

The mainstream strategy is to invest in highly diversified ETFs. Investing in just 4 companies would be considered exceptionally risky and contrarian by most people (I would personally also advocate going up to 20).

Also, not to nitpick, but Jobs and Gates are no longer running their companies, and Zuck is down to part-time. I don't consider either of those companies at the same level of growth potential as Apple back when Steve was running it.

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