How David Rubenstein Lost $50 Billion on Facebook

If we’re honest, all of us have made investing mistakes. But few people have made one that cost them the chance to make $50 billion. Here, billionaire and long-time leader of private equity firm The Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, explains how he did.

When Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard, my now son-in-law was his classmate, and he told me about this company. And he said, look, Mark is looking for $30,000 to get this thing off the ground. I said, "It's a dating company. It's not going to go anywhere." I'd seen dating companies before. Well, the guy that actually put in the $30,000 was one of his college classmates, Eduardo Saverin. He now has that stock and has never sold it. It's worth $50 billion. $50 billion! So I wish I had made that investment.
— David Rubenstein

Through Carlyle, Rubenstein also owned Amazon stock early on, but sold it quickly.

"We didn't think Amazon was going to get anywhere," he explained.

So the next time one of your investments goes bad, console yourself by remembering Rubenstein and the $50 billion he could have made, but didn't.

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