What if You Could Buy Stock in Peoples Careers?
I was reading a recent Bill Simmons article where he said, “I wish I could buy Jay Pharaoh stock,” which is a reference to Bill thinking Jay’s career will skyrocket after joining Saturday Night Live. This got me thinking, what if you could actually buy stock in a person’s career. Why would anybody even let shareholders in on their earnings? Why am I even thinking about this?
It turns out, I kept thinking about it and it’s kind of an interesting idea. Why would somebody let shareholders in our their future earnings? For the same reasons companies go public, mainly to raise cash–I guess. Consider a young superstar athlete with no money to attend a school where he/she might get noticed by the pros. Or a wannabe actor that is so funny you think there is no way he won’t make it on the big screen, but yet he or she has no financial means to attend acting classes or even know how to start the process of getting noticed. What if it was possible to say ok, I want to do this, I’m going public, which would mean investors could buy stock in the person and receive a share of future profits, or possibly lose everything if their investment does a Lindsay Lohan.
I know this is crazy, but stay with me, it’s a conversation starter. Say you bought stock in an potential actor when he was young and the cost was next to nothing and he blew up, meaning your earnings blew up. You could then sell some of your shares, thinking he’s reached the ceiling of success. Or, you could buy more of his stock. The individual would still make money by being the biggest shareholder, just like a CEO. He would have the most to gain and most to lose, which I would hope would be a good thing for investors.
Thankfully, this doesn’t exist, because after this article, my stock would have taken a nosedive. And for the record, Jay Pharaoh does a good Will Smith.
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Comments
that is an interesting idea. though it is not new. It kinda already exists, at least in the virtual game type of setting. there is a site called hsx.com where you can trade stock in actors, singers, movies and such. its fun, short term at least.
Seems like the student loan setup in America works a bit like this. They’re investing in the careers of our youth, except there’s one problem…
The youth have to pay back tens of thousands, often hundreds of thousands of dollars, and often can’t.
This is news to my ears!! Stocks with people’s career, definitely tweeting this to my followers.
Thanks for sharing
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This is a great idea and, in my opinion, might be a good way for early bands to earn some start up capital as opposed to getting an outrageous loan. The only problem I foresee with this is, there would need to be some kind of middleman to delegate and track the revenue of the band so as to provide dividends to the investors. Also, you would need to have enough investors so as to make it worth it to the band to go “public”. If you could solve these problems, you might have yourself a money maker.
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