A better analogy might be buying stock in a technology startup which is making a product completely unlike anything on the market now. It is certainly more risky than the sure thing, with lots of potential for losing your investment, but also has a much much higher potential payoff. This is generally the case in any sort of investing, whether it be investing in a charity or in a business—the higher the risk, the higher the potential gain. The sure stuff generally has plenty of funding already—the low hanging fruit has already been taken.
That being said, one should be on the lookout for good investing opportunities of both kinds—charging more (in terms of expected payoff) for the riskier ones but not shunning either completely.
A better analogy might be buying stock in a technology startup which is making a product completely unlike anything on the market now.
I think this is also a dangerous example because most of the salient and readily-available examples of doing this are the highly-publicized successes (this might be less true for people who are actually actively involved in technology investment—I say this from the perspective of an outsider).
These were my thoughts when I read this.
A better analogy might be buying stock in a technology startup which is making a product completely unlike anything on the market now. It is certainly more risky than the sure thing, with lots of potential for losing your investment, but also has a much much higher potential payoff. This is generally the case in any sort of investing, whether it be investing in a charity or in a business—the higher the risk, the higher the potential gain. The sure stuff generally has plenty of funding already—the low hanging fruit has already been taken.
That being said, one should be on the lookout for good investing opportunities of both kinds—charging more (in terms of expected payoff) for the riskier ones but not shunning either completely.
I think this is also a dangerous example because most of the salient and readily-available examples of doing this are the highly-publicized successes (this might be less true for people who are actually actively involved in technology investment—I say this from the perspective of an outsider).