How Did Chamath Palihapitiya Make His Money

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  Chamath Palihapitiya’s net worth is an estimated $1.two billion. The venture capitalist was a senior executive at Facebook before he left to run his VC fund Social Majuscule.
  
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  Palihapitiya has invested in several startups, including Slack, Virgin Galactic Holdings, and Sofi and his VC house has a residue sheet of $6 billion.
  
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  Besides investing in startups, Palihapitiya too owns real estate, watches, and once had a 10% pale in the Golden State Warriors NBA team.
  

Chamath Palihapitiya is well-known for his philosophical ideas and Twitter rants. The tech billionaire of Silicon Valley speaks regularly about wealth inequality, social justice, and lack of diversity in STEM fields on the podcast he co-hosts, The All-In.

With an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion, Chamath Palihapitiya has helped raised funds for several startups, including Slack, Virgin Galactic Holdings, and SoFi. He also one time owned 10% of the Aureate Land Warriors, which he bought equally a hedge while he got his venture capital (VC) fund Social Majuscule off the ground.

Here’south how the Sri Lankan-Canadian went from flipping burgers at Burger Rex to helping fund some of the biggest tech companies on Wall Street.

Chamath Palihapitiyanet worth at a glance:

Chamath Palihapitiya was born in Sri Lanka on September 3, 1976. When he was six, his family moved to Canada, where his mom worked as a housekeeper. His family applied for refugee status on the grounds that his father, Gamage, had been criticized for his views during the Siri Lankan Ceremonious War. Chamath Palihapitiya’s family unit was very poor, and he worked at Burger King from the age of 14 to assist his parents.

He graduated with an applied science degree from the Academy of Waterloo in 1999 before moving to California to work at AOL. He became the youngest vice president of AOL as the head of its instant messaging division in 2004. Palihapitiya left AOL in 2005 to join venture uppercase firm Mayfield Fund, but joined Facebook a few years later on. At Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya was an early senior executive and worked on building the company’s user growth. He helped the social media network hit one billion users in 2009.

In 2011 Chamath Palihapitiya left Facebook to starting time his own venture capital letter company, Social Capital. Merely he was already investing in venture uppercase even before he started his own company. Some of his earliest investments include now publicly traded companies Pure Storage and Palantir, as well as Bumptop (which was acquired by Google) and Playdom (which was bought by Disney).

The venture capitalist was also an investor in the Golden Country Warriors and at one signal had a 10% share that he purchased for $25 million. He sold his last ii% stake in 2022, when the Warriors had a value of $v.half-dozen billion, likely making him a decent turn a profit.

The majority of Chamath Palihapitiya’south investments are in startups. That’south mainly because he owns a venture majuscule firm, Social Capital, which invests in tech startups and provides them with seed funding, capital, and individual equity. He’s also invested in several special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).

Based on publicly available data, we estimate that Chamath Palihapitiya invests about 98% of his portfolio in venture capital, with 1.v% invested in

real manor


and less than 0.5% in luxury

watches

.

Social Majuscule venture capital fund

Even when he was still at Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya invested in a few tech startups. Today, his company Social Capital has a $half-dozen billion rest sheet and had a conveying value of $7.viii million in 2021. The company focuses on investing in tech startups at the early seed stage, as well as providing equity majuscule.

Some of the companies that Social Capital letter has invested in include a 10% stake in Slack, Box, Qenta, and many others. In full, the venture upper-case letter firm has invested in 426 companies, largely concentrated in healthcare, ecology protection, and instruction industries. The fund reported a decent render on investment of around 30% in 2020 and 2021.

Chamath Palihapitiya owns 30% of Social Capital, which we guess makes his pale worth well over a billion dollars. He likewise invests some of his own money into the deals that Social Capital makes, and has a personal stake in the SPAC deals. He’s recently sold a number of his SPAC shares, nearly doubling the $750 meg he put in.

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Real estate

While Chamath Palihapitiya makes most of his money as a venture capitalist, he also invests in real estate and owns two homes.

His vacation abode away from Silicon Valley is a Lake Tahoe holding he bought for $one.6 million in Bitcoin in 2014. Bitcoin prices took off shortly after, which means he would’ve faired better had he paid in cash instead. As it stands, the property today is likely worth $half-dozen.9 million, given the increase in existent estate over the final few years.

Chamath Palihapitiya also owns a home in Atherton, California. We don’t know how much he bought the home for (or if he even paid for it in cash), but given that the average value of homes in the area is $x one thousand thousand to $thirty million, it would exist probable that his home is worth at least $15 to $20 million.

At that place’s a reason why rich people own a lot of homes. Too the fact that they can afford to, existent manor is a good long-term investment that’s non historically correlated to the stock market. And with investing platforms like

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Watches

Like many other Rich Dudes, Chamath Palihapitiya is likewise

a spotter investor

. His watch investments are on the smaller end of his portfolio and may be more of a collecting hobby than a proper investment asset.

From what he’south been spotted wearing, he has quite the collection. His Richard Mille ROMO35 is worth about $320,000, while his Audemars Piguet Royal Oak goes for $285,000. He likewise has an A Lange & Söhne, which is a steal compared to his other watches at only $40,000.

While some luxury watches cost equally much every bit a house, that doesn’t mean the average investor can’t become them. With

Rally

, you lot can buy fractional shares of collectibles like luxury watches,

fine art

, and even

vino

. Investors tin sell their shares through Rally’south secondary market, which works just like the stock marketplace.

As a venture capitalist, Chamath Palihapitiya is ever looking for the adjacent large company to invest in. So far, he’due south managed to invest in several startups early on, such equally Slack and SoFi. His principal goal is to observe companies that are about to win and to invest in them earlier they gain mainstream popularity.

Here are some of the principles that guide Palihapitiya’s investments.

1.


Things that motion fast will fall merely as fast

When it comes to investing, you should wait at things in the long-term. If a company or asset moves very fast all of a sudden, that’south a red flag. A lot of quick growth tin can pb to a lack of foresight. Just look at Sam Bankman Fried as an example of a fast-growing company gone wrong.

2. Invest in a solution to a problem

When looking to invest, Chamath Palihapitiya looks at things that have value. He wants to exit a legacy, and that means finding and investing in solutions to issues.

3. Invest in things that serve people

Chamath Palihapitiya oft speaks almost social justice and inequalities in life. He applies his personal values to his investing approach. Rather than just using his wealth to get richer, he looks for ways to add value to other people’s lives.