*Half-baked idea*

Investing in public tech companies during a bubble isn't a bad thing, it just looks a lot more like VC than public market investing.

Explanation and back of the envelope math:

The goal is to beat the market over a long period of time. SPY started 1998 (pre-bubble) at $97.31. Today, it's at 329.33. It's up 3.38x over that period.

That's the bar. Portfolio 1 - all SPY - is what we have to beat.

What's a fair way to do this? Idea in venture (conservatively) is that you'll lose on 80-90% of your investments, and 10-20% will return the fund.

So let's say we're building a $10mm portfolio of ten public tech stocks at the peak of the bubble in 99-00. Equal allocation, $1mm

Portfolio 2: You buy 9 stocks that go to 0, and $AMZN at its peak.

It hit $113 on 12/5/99, up 23x from the start of 1998.

You're up 2.7x for a return of 172%, worse than just buying SPY by 28%.

Not great, but you're up, and you bought at the absolute worst time!

Portfolio 3: Same thing, but with $AAPL.

It hit $1.34 (split adjusted) on 3/19/00, up 9x from the start of 1998.

Today, you're up 8.2x for a return of 723%, 3x better than just buying SPY.

You tripled market performance even though you bought at AAPL's peak!

Portfolio 4: You nailed AAPL and AMZN, and 8 stocks went to 0.

Today, you're up 10.9x for a return of 995%, 4.18x better than just buying the S&P 500 and holding.

This is after buying AAPL and AMZN at the absolute worst time during the bubble, and you're still much better off!

For this to work, you'd need to have picked Apple and Amazon, but that's pretty much what venture's about - picking winners so good they make up for all of your losers.

Don't think we're in a bubble now, but even if we were, there could still be great opportunities.