HACKER Q&A
📣 elamje

Pulling all $ out of public equities. Interesting private alternatives?


Not one to ask questions like, “what stock to buy?”.

I thought I could get some useful insight here and help others by asking people for interesting private investments they have been part of, or have seen.

I’m pulling all of my money out of public equities for the next few years (except my tax advantaged accounts). My goal is to do something interesting, e.g. small private equity, investing in social media accounts, small angel investing, etc. It can be passive or active, equity or debt based. I’m interested in it all.

Essentially, I find this period of time fascinating because rates and returns in public markets seem to be below private markets, and I’d like to focus my energy doing interesting things there, rather than buying index funds etc.

Feel free to hit me on Twitter @elamje or email johne@hey.com as well.

What are some really interesting investments you have heard of that are unique?

  👤 deanmoriarty Accepted Answer ✓
My portfolio is split 50-50: I have $2M in common Vanguard index funds, and $2M in private illiquid equity from a startup I worked for in the past, via options I exercised.

Every now and then someone contacts me interested in buying some shares of that company, which I promptly sell and immediately buy index funds with the proceeds. I liquidated about $1M of those shares already, let me know if you have $2M to burn sitting in your pockets :-)

I wanted to invest in some private real estate syndications, but then covid came through and I don’t think it’s a good time to buy commercial real estate. Plus, my job keeps me super busy.

To be honest, if index funds end up averaging a return of 3-5% after inflation, it would be more than enough for me, that’s why I keep investing in VTI/VXUS, I have done that for a decade now, non stop.

What options are you finding right now? I find that the opportunities available to little guys like me who might not want to put more than 50-100k per deal are incredibly limited.

👤 baccredited
With a few hundred thousand to invest I'd probably do a 3-way split between:

https://www.thesyndicate.com/ - back Jason's next 50 deals at 2K each

Put 25K each into the next 4 YCombinator deals at https://fundersclub.com/

Put 50K in the next 2 quarters at AngelList Access Funds https://angel.co/v/access-fund

If you do any of this give me a follow at @baccredited and let me know how it goes. I just followed you as well.

👤 Bostonian
'I’m pulling all of my money out of public equities for the next few years (except my tax advantaged accounts).'

To avoid paying taxes on realized capital gains, you should be selling stocks in your tax-advantaged accounts, not your taxable ones.

👤 marketgod
Why do you think that the public markets are a bad investment right now? The public markets are a stock pickers market right now, so something like TSLA is going to outperform a lot of different investment options over the next 5-years.