Bill Benter achieved the impossible:
He “cracked the code” at the race track — and made close to $1 billion.
For real.
Today, I’ll tell you how he did it…
Then I’ll show you how to crack a different code — a code that might be just as profitable.
$13 Million in Winnings — From A Single Race
On a fall evening in 2001, it seemed all of Hong Kong was talking about the big jackpot.
At the Happy Valley Racecourse, the winner of a horse race called the Triple Trio would pocket $13 million — and perhaps even more.
It was a tricky bet. Since the Triple Trio requires players to predict the top three horses in three different heats, more than ten million combinations were possible.
Given the size of the jackpot, about one million people made bets.
But only one of those people won.
His name was Bill Benter — and this is his story.
An Eagle Scout Goes to Vegas
Benter grew up in Pittsburgh. He was a diligent student and an Eagle Scout.
While studying physics in college, he decided to put his skills with numbers to the test:
He hopped on a Greyhound bus headed to Vegas. It was time to play cards.
He didn’t cheat. He simply figured out how to beat the odds. Soon he was making $80,000 a year.
But after earning a spot in the “Griffin Book” — a blacklist of players who’ve been known to beat the casinos — it was time for Benter to move onto greener pastures…
Hong Kong Horse Racing
Benter dove into the study of advanced statistics and learned to code. Then he spent nine months setting up a database with the results from thousands of past horse races.
Soon he’d created his first betting program — an algorithm that could “crack the code” about which horses would win a race.
With his program in hand, he landed in Hong Kong.
Horse racing in Hong Kong is a big deal. By the time Benter got there in the mid-1980s, Hong Kong was betting billions of dollars a year on horses — far more than in the U.S.
And now, working out of a tiny apartment in a dilapidated building, Benter was ready to put his program to the test.
The initial results? Disastrous.
Benter struggled with his algorithms. If he bet too little, he was squandering his advantage. If he bet too much, he was at risk of losing everything.
By the end of his first betting season, he’d lost $120,000.
Benter Turns Things Around
He threw himself into adjusting his model.
He tested using less inputs. He added data about how different horses performed in different temperatures. He incorporated publicly-available betting odds.
And eventually, he hit pay-dirt. In the 1990-1991 season, he won about $3 million.
After that, his earnings just grew and grew. According to Benter, he made close to $1 billion. Benter had cracked the code — he’d figured out how to beat the market.
Ready to beat the market yourself? Now you can… even if horse racing isn’t your thing.
You just need to know how to crack a different type of code…
Retire from Just One Investment
The code I’m referring to is an investment strategy — a strategy to invest in private startups.
Why startups? Simple:
According to Cambridge Analytics, an advisor to institutions like The Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard University, investing in startups has returned an average of 55% per year over 25 years.
That’s enough to double your money every couple of years or so.
But remember, that’s just the average. Plenty of folks — people we know and work with — have done far better than average.
For example, consider our business partner Howard Lindzon. Howard made 400x his money by investing in Uber when it was just a private startup. He turned every $5,000 he invested into $2 million. Furthermore, his overall annual returns have been measured in the "hundreds of percent."
What’s the secret to earning triple-digit annual returns?
Just like with Bill Benter and his winning strategy at the track, here’s the secret:
Knowing the numbers.
Enough to Retire
So without further ado, here are “the numbers” — in other words, the numbers you need to know to crack the code of startup investing.
Let’s say you invest in 50 startups over the next few years.
You put $1,000 into each one, for a total investment of $50,000.
Based on the historical odds, it’s likely you’ll get a handful of base hits — enough hits to get you to the 55% annual returns we mentioned earlier.
But even if your first 49 investments literally go to zero, as long as the 50th company turns out to be “an Uber” — the investment where Howard made 400 times in money — your $1,000 investment would be worth $400,000.
So your $50,000 startup portfolio would turn into $400,000.
That’s a 700% net return.
And what if you’d invested $5,000 into each startup instead?
Your stake would be worth $2 million.
For most folks, that’s enough money to retire.
And that, my friends, is how you crack the code of startup investing.
Happy Investing.
Best Regards,
Founder
Crowdability.com
