Hi Chris, Just wanted to know can you invest in students studying their MBA at Harvard i.e. give them money straight up for them to complete their MBA at Harvard for a percent of the career earnings?
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The fascinating thing is that I came up with the concept of the “personal IPO” back in the 1990s, and later returned to it in this blog post about personal venture capital.
The short answer is that there is no formal program for making such investments. But I think it could work. The key with these personal investments is to provide enough money to allow the investee to create value, but not enough to satisfy them.
In my previous post, I suggested $50,000/year…living expenses for a single entrepreneur, but not enough to hamper his or her hunger.
What do you think, folks? Any takers?
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I have had a similar idea from your personal IPO concept - problem is it’s illegal to claim future earnings: http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am13
Damn Constitution!
Hey wait a minute, I don’t think the 13th amendment prohibits a consensual contract between two adults.
http://www.slate.com/id/2182824/
Doesn’t seem to be illegal, unless you’re a ball player.
Is that a formal offer Chris? If so, I’m in!
Two concepts here. First of all, there is already a person-to-person lending site exclusively for student loans. It’s called fynanz.com. I don’t have any experience with this specific p2p lending site, but it certainly would be one way to make an investment via lending to a budding college or grad student.
As far as the “personal IPO” concept, well…great concept, but how to pull it off? A plain old loan is just easier to manage than an “IPO”. There’s all sorts of practical considerations, like to how to determine future earnings, how to deal with “reinvested” profits, when “dividends” would be paid, how and when one could opt out of the contract … in short, student loans are just easier for everyone to manage.