The Big Book of Pre-IPO Profits

How to find, fund, and profit from pre-IPO startups — just like a venture capitalist.

Welcome to The Big Book of Pre-IPO Profits.

In this easy-to-read book, you’ll learn how to find, fund, and profit from early-stage startups, just like a professional venture capitalist. Even better, you can get started in this market with just a few hundred dollars.

Perhaps this is your first step into the world of startup investing. As you’re about to learn, being an early-stage investor isn’t just exciting — it can also have a big impact.

First of all, startup investors are essential to helping world-changing companies get started. Without these early investors, companies like Apple, Google, and Amgen wouldn’t exist, and our lives would look vastly different.

But just as important to you, startup investors can make a fortune. The way they make their profits is straightforward: they invest in tiny private companies when their shares are still dirt cheap. This is well before these startups go public in an Initial Public Offering (IPO). That’s why they’re called pre-IPO startups. And when these companies start trading in the stock market, their early investors can cash out.

For example, as of 2021, Uber’s first startup investors were sitting on estimated profits of 8,000x their money. Facebook’s earliest startup investor made $1 billion when the company went public. And Airbnb’s first startup investors made an estimated 100,000x their money. Investments like these could change your life overnight.

But let’s forget about those extreme examples for a moment. Instead, let’s look at the long- term averages. According to Cambridge Analytics, an advisor to institutions like The Rockefeller Foundation, Harvard University, and the Bill Gates Family Office, over the past twenty-five years or so, investing in startups has returned fifty-five percent per year.

Here’s how to put that number in perspective:

If you could earn fifty-five percent each year on a portfolio of startups, $5,000 would turn into $400,000 in ten years. Meanwhile, if you invested $5,000 into the stock market for ten years and earned the average returns for stocks, your money would grow to just $10,000.

In fact, a shift has happened over the past few decades: the biggest financial returns have moved from public stocks to private startups. We’ll show you what we mean later in the book, with the Story of the Burning Match.

But the returns aren’t the only reason that pre-IPO investing is so powerful:

• For starters, investing in pre-IPO startups provides diversification away from the stock market. In fact, even if the market crashes, startups can keep growing in value.
• Startups also offer a hedge against inflation. With inflation currently at multi-decade highs, that’s a valuable trick.
• Furthermore, great companies can get started even during the bleakest of times. For example, Disney was founded during the Great Depression of 1929. Microsoft was founded in 1975, while the U.S. GDP was taking its worst hit in nearly two decades. And Airbnb was founded during the Great Recession of 2008.

Click here to download, "The Big Book of Pre-IPO Profits."