Comment in Tekedia Capital WhatsApp Group: “Nd, I hope we can participate in the [Tesla] IPO. Pls, I would like to know how. Thanks”.
[From Fortune Magazine: “The company [Tesla] had already filed confidentially and is seeking to raise up to $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion. That would surpass the current record holder for the biggest IPO ever: Saudi Aramco, which $29 billion raised at a $1.7 trillion valuation in 2019.”]
My Response: Good People, if your objective is to buy U.S. public equities, there are many established platforms where you can open brokerage accounts and participate directly in the market. The public market ecosystem is open, accessible, and highly structured. Use Robinhood, Schwab, Fidelity, etc.
But note that the economic physics of public markets differs fundamentally from what we do in Tekedia Capital. Here, we intentionally take unusual risks because we are pursuing the mathematics of the power law. In practical terms, we are seeking outcomes that can deliver 10x, 50x, or even 100x returns. The expectation framework is different.
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Take Tesla as an illustration. Assume Tesla were to IPO today at a valuation of US$2 trillion and over five years grows to US$6 trillion in enterprise value. That would represent a 3x return, an extraordinary result in public market investing. Yet many here would likely consider a 10x return within 12–24 months modest relative to the expectations of venture-style investing; all of us here rejected [redacted] exit at 10x within 14 months.
Why? Because the value extraction curve differs. Much of Tesla’s transformational value was created while it was still private. Some investors entered when Tesla was valued at perhaps US$100 million, not after it had already become one of the world’s largest companies. Participating at the early stage, that US$100 million stage, is largely what we seek to do.
This means our investment mindset differs from conventional public-market investing. In public markets, delivering 3x over five or six years can be exceptional alpha. In private investing, depending on the risk profile, that may not produce the outcomes investors seek. Ultimately, investing comes down to philosophy.
Over time, I have broadly identified three categories of investors: the Value Picker, the Growth Maker, and the Income Chaser. Your personal goals, risk appetite, and time horizon will determine where you fit. The Value Picker searches for undervalued assets. The Growth Maker seeks asymmetrical upside and transformational outcomes. The Income Chaser prioritizes predictable cash flow and stability.
Each is valid. What particularly excites me, however, is another opportunity entirely: creating closed/open-ended investment structures in Nigeria that aggregate smaller amounts of capital from everyday people and deploy that capital into high-quality pre-IPO opportunities, African unicorns, and even large global private companies.
Think of a structure similar to what Cathie Wood executes through ARK Venture Fund, except optimized for our market. Such a vehicle could mobilize retail participation at scale, democratize access to growth assets, and create a pathway where ordinary people can invest in established but still-private category leaders. Subject to regulatory approval, infrastructure like [redacted] can provide a marketplace where such assets become more visible and accessible.
That is where I see the future: not merely buying already-established public companies but creating systems where more people can participate earlier in wealth creation. That is investment inclusion. And that is how to build wealth instead of thinking that buying into a $2 trillion company will reshape your personal economy dramatically.
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