The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions Read Online Free PDF Page A

pouring myself a bowl of cereal, and parking myself in front of the television. I had the morning newspaper to my left and a pad and pencil to my right. The fact is, anyone can do this. It’s just like homework, except it’s the real world. It takes time and effort to get an A, and the same rules apply here, but the difference is that this is worth taking very, very seriously. After all, we’re not talking about grades—we’re talking about serious money.
    When my father finally emerged from his bedroom, eyes still heavy with sleep, he would plunge in without small talk. “What’s new this morning? What looks good?”
    We studied charts together. Looked over annual reports. Discussed a company’s earnings. I began to understand all the critical elements on which a company’s performance was based, the same elements on which my debut company would soon be judged. It was strange. In ten years, I had gone from watching
Barney
to watching the business news, and I found the business news a lot more compelling.
    As I’ve said, we are not overtly emotional men, my father and I, and we don’t go in for that touchy-feely stuff, but this joint experience—the daily business talk, the morning briefings—created an atmosphere in which we could really bond.
    “I like DoubleClick,” I remember saying.
    “What do they do?”
    “Advertising,” I said. “On the Internet.”
    But we didn’t invest in DoubleClick. There were too many other options, and at times it seemed as if all of them were profitable—as if we could do no wrong.
    At one point, emboldened by his modest successes, my father began to think about moving the family out of the ’hood. On weekends, he took us house hunting, until at long last we stumbled across a new development in a nice section of San Jose. At that point, the thirty houses hadn’t progressed beyond the foundations, but five hundred people were already lined up to buy. The developer, clearly overwhelmed, resorted to alottery system, and we were among the lucky ones. (Not the first time the Chahal family had struck gold with a lottery!) We were ecstatic. My father immediately wrote a check for the down payment, and on the ride home we talked about the size of the big-screen TV we’d be putting in the family room.
    A few days later, my father got a call from a complete stranger. The man offered him $50,000 for the lot, but my father wouldn’t sell. The home was more important to him. It was why he had come to America. “I’m not interested,” he said. “This isn’t about money. This is for my family.”
    On October 27, 1997, with our dream home already half completed, the market crashed. My father, never an emotional guy, fell apart completely. He had bought a lot of stock on margin and lost everything, plus he was about to lose money he didn’t have.
    That night, at the dinner table, he told us that the dream was no longer viable. We would not be moving into our new home. Worse, it looked as if the market was going to keep sliding. It had dropped 500 points, and he suspected there was worse to come. “In the morning, as soon as the market opens, I will sell everything,” he said. “We will end up with nothing, but at least we won’t be in debt.”
    The following morning, the minute the market opened, he sold everything. Half an hour later, the Dow climbed 324 points. My father was doubly crushed. If he had held on foranother hour, he would have recouped most of his losses, and we would have been able to move into our new home. Now we would lose even the down payment.
    That was the first time I had ever seen my father cry. Here was a man who always played his cards close to the vest, and he was sobbing in front of the entire family. He was defeated, and I was terrified for him.
    “I am a complete failure,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I have failed my family. I owe all of you an apology.”
    He left for work before any of us had a chance to comfort him.
    A few