Private Island Money

In 1998, it felt like magic. May 21, 2024 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( That one investment that, if you had just pulled the trigger then and there, would've earned you private island money Chris’ note: Holy moly. As you know, big things are happening in crypto. Full update coming tomorrow. In the meantime, James wants to talk about another urgent opportunity: this time in the AI industry. You’re not bullish enough! Private Island Money JAMES ALTUCHER Dear Reader, Stop me if this sounds familiar. It's January 1998, and you're staring at your computer screen, looking at the stock chart for Amazon.com. Earlier in the day, you received a package with a rare chess book from the online retailer. The book was out of print and wasn't available at the library or any bookstore within 100 miles. Somehow, this obscure company out of Seattle managed to get their hands on it. A few days later, it was in your hands. It felt like magic. For a brief moment, you contemplated making an investment. As you looked at the chart on your computer, you came up with a million reasons not to invest. "The internet is going to kill books." "Most people hate reading. How big is the book industry anyway?" "Barnes and Noble is going to mop the floor with them." And so on. You closed your web browser and didn't look at Amazon's stock until years later. Every investor has a story just like this—the one investment that got away. That one investment that, if you had just pulled the trigger then and there, would've earned you private island money. Of course, everything seems obvious in retrospect. At the height of the dotcom bubble, it was nearly impossible to sort through all the noise. However, the reason Amazon would go on to become one of the biggest companies in the world wasn't because of their bookstore. It was what they learned in the process of building that bookstore that would eventually make Jeff Bezos unbelievably wealthy. It was an insight staring me right in the face at the time. ‘90s Problems Back in 1998, I was running an agency building websites for media companies. I did websites for Loud Records (the Wu-Tang Clan), Bad Boy Records, Interscope Records, Jive Records, BMG, Sony, Miramax, Time Warner, and many of New Line Cinema's movies. We got most of your clients through bribery, but that's a story for another time. I made a habit of regularly meeting with our competitors who also built websites. We’d ask each other questions, try to make deals with each other. "I'll give you these clients if you give me those." "You heard what about who?" "He got that client?" "You're using what technology?" There's one particular lunch meeting that still stands out. The head of a competitor had recently launched the website for a movie that was an unexpected box office hit. The marketing campaign for the movie included a lot of tie-ins to the website, and the website was getting more traffic than it could handle. To make matters worse, the servers for the website were in the company's office in New York City. It was a heatwave, and the office air conditioner had blown out. With thousands of visitors accessing the website, the servers were overheating and powering off. The website kept crashing. The head of the movie studio was furious. The movie studio was their biggest client; they couldn't afford to lose it. The CEO was going to lunch to meet with the studio head. He told his engineers that he needed a solution by the time he came back from lunch. When he returned, he found that the engineers had punched a hole in the wall between the office and the hallway so that the office could be cooled by the hallway's air conditioning. Now the building management was threatening to evict them. But it didn't matter—the solution worked, the servers were running fine, and the company lived to see another day. It was an extreme example of the pain we were feeling at the time. The hardest part of building websites in the late nineties was managing the servers that kept them running. It was a chore that required constant maintenance: overseeing software updates, upgrading hardware, adding new hardware when there was a need for more capacity, and so on. While me and my competitors were experiencing this pain on the East Coast, over on the West Coast, Jeff Bezos and his team were experiencing the same headaches. [External Advertisement] [JOLTS OVERNIGHT TRADE DEMONSTRATION]( Every Time the Government Releases Jobs Data... Make This Trade the Night Before! (Target up to 253%... 327%... Even 383% gains... OVERNIGHT!) [Next JOLTS Trade Thursday at 2 pm!]( The Next Amazon? Four years later, they would launch Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a way to simplify the experience of managing infrastructure for businesses. According to some estimates, today something like 30% of all internet traffic touches AWS. Businesses like Netflix, Slack, Yelp, and more rely on Amazon's servers to run their operations. Although AWS accounted for just 13% of Amazon's revenue in 2021, it made up 74% of the company's operating profit. In other words, without AWS, Amazon would not be the technology giant it is today. Jeff Bezos' boring business of keeping servers humming would turn out to be one of the most profitable businesses of all time. However, the massive move towards AI has ignited a shift that could unseat AWS and make well-positioned investors a fortune in the process. I’m talking about a little-known “backdoor” investment opportunity. It’s such a big deal, my publisher Doug Hill and I held an entire event around one stock. [We posted the full interview right here.]( The next Amazon is out there… and just like in 1998, it’s probably right under your nose. Well… We think we might’ve found it. Or at least, a company with similar potential upside. [Check out the full interview right here](. Until next time, James Altucher For Altucher Confidential Rate this email Like Dislike Thanks for rating this content! Looks like something went wrong. Please try to rate again. [The "X" Chip]( This AI microchip is so powerful…. It’s powering NVIDIA’s success… And the future of AI itself… Which will send the current Wealth Window into OVERDRIVE… Positioning one stock for a 10,000% run in the coming years. [Watch this video for the full details.]( You Might be Interested in... 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