Celebrity fame doesn?t last forever. One decade you?re riding high on TV interviews and movie deals, the next you?re hawking autographs at The Big County Fair.
Of course, not all celebrities leave the limelight kicking and screaming. Some pursue new, absolutely awesome forms of employment. Case in point: Ashton Kutcher.
Who knew that Ashton Kutcher was such a badass investor? It?s awesome to hear Ashton Kutcher talk about his $100 million venture fund A- Grade Investments.
Ashton Kutcher went from playing the dumb Michael Kelso on ?That 70s Show? to being a well-respected tech investing venture capitalist. This is a case of life NOT imitating art. Where life DOES imitate art is Ashton?s recent role as Steve Jobs in the film about the Apple co-founder.
In 2011, Kutcher created a venture fund, A- Grade Investments, with Ron Burkle and Guy Oseary. A-Grade has invested in multiple tech companies including Spotify, Foursquare, Fab, Uber, and more. Kutcher and A-Grade have shown an incredible ability to pick winners. But, they?ve also picked some duds like Bitcoin.
What does Ashton Kutcher look for in an investment?
Ashton says that he doesn?t look at a company and say ok, its going to make X amount of money next year and the market cap is XX. He says that instead he looks at the density of the problem the company is trying to solve.
Ashton says that instead of screening for stocks, he screens for problems and then he looks for companies that are trying to solve those problems.
The next thing Ashton looks for is an extraordinary entrepreneur. He says that a lot of the companies they invest in are two guys in a garage with PowerPoint and a dog. He asks if this guy or girl is going to build something that is going to endure. He also looks at if the entrepreneur has the passion and resolve to withstand the challenges he or she is going to face along the way.
Ashton Kutcher and his business partners just opened up the A-Grade fund for some investors. Financial institutions and companies will invest a certain amount of money in A-Grade in exchange for equity in the A-Grade fund. They have raised the money they wanted and an announcement will be coming soon from the partners.
The latest investment by the A-Grade fund is a $1.5 million investment in CityMaps. CityMaps goal is not to compete with Google Maps, the dominant leader in the online map space, but instead to carve out a new niche by making maps more social. CityMaps is not so much about building the map itself, but rather a layer on top of the basic mapping data. The idea is that users can build their own maps of what matters to them, such as lists of favorite restaurants or stores. In addition, friends can suggest places they should add to their lists, too.
CNBC sat down with Ashton Kutcher to talk investing. Awesome stuff folks. Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments section below.
Naked and Afraid Demi Lovato Patrice Bergeron Adrien Broner Anna Kendrick Allan Simonsen paula deen
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.