In 2016, Venkatesh acquired what he thought would be a good long-term investment – and the company’s profile showed it had good potential based on its statistics and then-current standing. It was a large, generic-pharmaceutical manufacturer, one of the top three in India and 20th in the world.

In the summer of 2010, when Sloane had just joined the CFA, she had a very unusual, purely meat-eating Eastern European person move into her house who was “in the process of moving all of his personal wealth into Bitcoin”.

One of Tyler’s memories from his first-year high school business class was that the teacher said that back in the 1980s he had received a tip to buy Microsoft stock. The teacher said: “I didn’t move on it. Had I done so, I would be worth millions.” Tyler never forgot that lesson and since them, all he could think was: “The first tip I get, I’m all in.” 

Giacomo’s story starts just after exiting one of his successful start-ups when he took those funds, bought a 12th-century Byzantine temple in Rimini, Italy, on the Adriatic coast, hired about 20 staff and set up Black Marketing Guru. They help start-ups and industries to increase business, revenues and clicks, and views.

In thinking about his worst investment, Erik said he had lost a lot of money in a variety of ways. He did a lot of damage with a raid into crypto almost at its peak. He has done quite a few “shitty” start-up investments. But he realized that his worst investment cost a lot more than money.