What if you woke up tomorrow and found $10 million in your bank account?
How about $100 million? How about a billion?
What would you do with all that money?
What’s the most outrageous thing you’d buy?
Give it a think—
Then you can compare it to a few over-the-top shopping sprees of Silicon Valley’s big spenders.
“Give me that house... and the one next to it... and the one next to that...”
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, was just 28-years-old when his company went public.
He became an instant billionaire.
What does a financially responsible 28-year-old do with billions of dollars?
Well, first he buys a house—then he buys many more houses:
After scooping up his first home, he decided to buy the four others that surrounded it to get some privacy. Check out a map of Zuck’s homes here »
For a guy who built a company based on removing any hints of privacy, this seems ironic—but hey, when you’re worth $54.4 billion, you can do whatever you want.
Kind of like our next entrepreneur-turned-billionaire...
A Million-Dollar Car Crash
Currently, Elon Musk is the CEO of three futuristic businesses:
Tesla, the electric car maker; Solar City, the solar panel manufacturer; and SpaceX, the space exploration company.
His net worth is an estimated $12 billion.
But before Musk started tackling game-changing ventures like space exploration, he founded a more down-to-earth Internet company called Zip2.
Zip2 provided newspapers with web-based city guides so their readers could get a daily rundown on what was happening in their city.
In 1999, the company was acquired by Compaq for $307 million, netting Musk a cool $22 million.
Musk was 28-years-old. So what do you suppose he bought as a celebratory gift? Something sensible like real estate?
Not quite.
He bought a $1 million car: the McLaren F1 supercar.
Then, while pulling a stunt on a suburban street in Silicon Valley, he wrecked it.
And as it turns out, while Musk was smart enough to sell a company for $300 million, he wasn’t smart enough to get car insurance. Ouch!
Check out this old video of Musk taking possession of his McLaren »
Elon’s story of recklessness isn’t uncommon in the annals of young Silicon Valley millionaires, but it’s nothing compared to this next one.
“You Shall Not Pass!”
Just when Facebook was getting off the ground, Sean Parker joined as an early employee.
He wasn’t even a founder of the company, but when Facebook went public, his net worth ballooned to $2.4 billion.
Sure, he used some of that money to buy houses and cars, but he saved his most outrageous spending for something a little more personal:
His “Lord of the Rings”-themed wedding in Big Sur, California.
First he had a beautiful setting cleared out, deep in a grove of redwood forests.
Then he imported custom-made flower arrangements, wood benches, and “Lord of the Rings” costumes for his 364 guests.
All told, he spent $10 million.
And Parker was aiming to spend even more...
You see, to officiate his wedding, he attempted to recruit Sir Ian McKellen, the award-winning actor who played Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” films.
Parker offered Sir McKellen—a bona fide knight!—$1.5 million to dress up as Gandalf and officiate.
McKellen declined, politely telling Parker that “Gandalf doesn’t do weddings.”
You can read more about this fiasco here »
What Would YOU Do?
Put yourself in these newly-minted millionaires’ shoes…
If you’d worked as hard as they did and got rich, how would you spend your newfound wealth?
How would your day-to-day life change?
Keep those answers in mind…
Because next week we’re going to let you in on a little secret:
First we’ll show you how a small circle of Silicon Valley insiders not only added millions (sometimes, billions) of dollars to their net worth...
But we’ll show you how they did it in just 24 hours.
Then we’ll show you how this secret could work for you.
Stay tuned!
Best Regards,
Founder
Crowdability.com
