Missed Coinbase Duo

A story about two major investment opportunities Suleman Ali missed: Coinbase's early days and Facebook stock during the 2008 financial crisis.

The Coinbase Miss: "At TinyCo, we had this guy who worked for me named Adam Merber. He was roommates with Fred, the Coinbase cofounder. Brian Armstrong and Fred were fundraising for their Series A. They got term sheets from Andreessen Horowitz and Benchmark and called me asking if they should go with Benchmark or Andreessen Horowitz. I told them to go with Andreessen Horowitz. If I had asked to put in $25k into this round during that call, they would have said yes. That $25k at their IPO was worth $200 million. I didn't ask because I didn't believe - I thought 'crypto, bitcoin, these guys are building PayPal for crypto and bitcoin, that's silly, that's just PayPal.'"

The Facebook Miss: "During the 2008 financial crisis, Facebook was valued at $2 billion in the private market. I signed a contract to buy $150,000 worth of Facebook stock. The stock price went down 50% in the private market. I called my father, and he said 'don't worry about it, just buy it and you'll be fine, it'll go back up.' Instead, I didn't buy it. They threatened to sue me since I signed a contract. I paid them $75,000 to not buy it. I was going to buy from someone else who was selling, but they backed out. Then another seller came to me, and I hooked up a friend with that Facebook stock instead. He bought $50k worth which ended up being worth $8 million."