The difference between tech insiders and the hoi polloi is that the tech insiders make their real money long before a company goes public. This is especially true of the so-called unicorns — those tech companies with pre-IPO valuations of $1 billion or more.
The insiders invest when the company is still in its early stages, while it’s raising money to build a business the public markets will one day embrace. Carl Icahn is a pretty good example of this: He put $100 million into Lyft Inc. in 2015 and added an additional $50 million later on. Four years later, just before Lyft went public, he sold his stake to George Soros for somewhere around $500 million. Nice work if you can get it.
