Ideatrotter

Bieber has acquired everything: fame, fortune and networks. He recently turned 18 and is looking for a new challenge. Instead of spending his fortune on blow and alcohol, Bieber has decided to follow the route of other celebrities, that being investing in hot startups. Celebrities are no different than other investors, who have concluded that investing in tech is a gold mine. 

With stakes in Tinychat, Spotify, Stamped and now Viddy, Bieber hopes to foray into the VC world with a portfolio, similar to Kutcher. In an interview with Forbes, the following was disclosed about his investment plan in startups:

In a typical Bieber deal he’ll put in about $250,000 at the favorable pricing generally reserved for smart money—the kind of strategic partners that help a company long term. Braun won’t disclose the size of Bieber’s portfolio but says it’s between 2% and 5% of the singer’s net worth. FORBES puts Bieber’s fortune at about $80 million, which translates to somewhere in the ballpark of $3 million in venture investments.

Great going Bieber - its good to see the newest boy idol not crashing and burning like other teen pop stars.

Dave McClure represents that egregious class of geeks whose success makes a suit consider the so-called “hoodie” path. Beyond founding 500 Startups and Geeks On A Plane, Dave has gone on a bender, trying to discover entrepreneurs in different corners of the world, bringing their emerging talents to the forefront.

Heading Paypal’s marketing in the 2000s, McClure was later given $3 million to manage the Founder’s Fund and Facebook Fund. This small pool of money led to the birth of 500 Startups. Why not help launch startups for cheap earlier where the cost impact can be minimized? Now McClure hopes to take his success to destinations like Latin America and India, where startup-dom is the new wave. Gigaom’s link provides a nice in-depth article into why McClure’ boyish dream may actually become a reality. 

Zuckerberg has come a long way since his Harvard days of writing the source code for the largest social network in the world. Controlling over 1/8th of the world’s online experience, Zuckerberg sits tall as the CEO of the largest social network. Now Zuckerberg is part of an elite club that sits next to the president at the White House, discussing national strategies. 

While “The Social Network” portrays Zuckerberg as an awkward, lanky teenager who stole an idea, he is representative of one of the best execution artists. An idea is as good as its execution, and Zuckerberg had to battle Friendster, MySpace, Buddylists and social networks originating from similar Ivy League campuses. The Winklevosses had their own separate social network which never took off. Now imagine a world where Zuckerberg followed all the rules and collaborated with the Winklevosses. 800 Million Users? I think not.