CEO Of Social Capital Tells Where He'd Put All Of His Money If He Had To Make One Investment

These Questions originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.

Answers by Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital; Owner of the Golden State Warriors; Merchant of Progress, on Quora.

Q: If you had to put all of your money in one investment today with a 10-year holding period, what would it be?

A: I would buy AMZN. I think Amazon is the most interesting company right now and represents the surest path to a $5T (15-20x from current levels) market cap within 50 years. The reason I think this has nothing to do with e-commerce, although e-commerce is their way of dogfooding the real reason: AWS.
AWS is a tax on the compute economy. So whether you care about mobile apps, consumer apps, IoT, SaaS, etc., etc., more companies than not will be using AWS versus building their own infrastructure. E-commerce was AMZN's way to dogfood AWS, and continue to do so so that it was mission grade. If you believe that over time the software industry is a multi, deca-trillion industry, then ask yourself how valuable a company would be who taxes the majority of that industry.
1%, 2%, 5% -- it doesn't matter because the numbers are so huge -- the revenues, profits, profit margins, etc. I don't see any cleaner monopoly available to buy in the public markets right now.

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Q: When do you think the startup bubble in India will burst?

A: There are a handful of startups in India that will not only determine the liquidity path for the rest of India but many companies in the US as well. At the top of that list is Flipkart. If they can't get profitable and IPO, it will be an unmitigated disaster for any unicorn who isn't already profitable or almost there. The reason is that they are the current poster boy for gross margin expansion at all costs funded by rational, institutional investors while competing with a company (Amazon) who views winning India as an existential risk. So Bezos will keep spending billions, and somehow, Flipkart will have to do the same but not from an unlimited balance sheet, but from rational investors who ultimately have to answer to their LPs. If Flipkart doesn't win (and winning may be 1x capital), the implications for the rest of the market are very bad.

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