How to make a fortune from Altium

[VK3DRB]

Altium's share price was 12 cents in 2012. Back then, a mate of mine, a fellow electronics engineer, suggested I buy Altium shares, but I ignored him, thinking its all gambling. He owned 5% of Altium at that time.
The share price is now $65, after being bought out by Renesas two weeks ago.
If I had invested $10K in 2012, my shares would be would $5.4 million today. DOH! Isn't hindsight a great thing.

But I am a user of Altium, paying a high yearly maintenance every year for mainly for bug fixes and minimal enhancements. Under Renesas, I wonder if they are going to hike the maintenance costs further. One would hope not, because in my opinion the benefit versus cost is simply not there.

Moral of the story: You could have made a fortune out of Altium... by investing in it and not doing any work, instead of being a user - busting your brains and wallet designing PCB's.

PS: Altium better watch out of competition such as KiCad.

[Doctorandus_P]

There was a time that I thought about buying 20 to 50 bitcoins "just for fun". I think they were around 2ct around that time.

[Psi]

There was a time that I thought about buying 20 to 50 bitcoins "just for fun". I think they were around 2ct around that time.

Yep, We've all had that.
I really wanted to get a couple of BTC when they were ~$400 each but paying for them was quite hard at the time. Most bank CCs would reject any payment to a BTC exchange considering that to be a payment to a fraudulent company.
It was all too hard so I gave up.

[thm_w]

It is gambling, you could have just as easily lost it all.
There are thousands of penny stock companies that sound like good investments, why not randomly invest $10k into one of those?

[VK3DRB]

It is gambling, you could have just as easily lost it all.
There are thousands of penny stock companies that sound like good investments, why not randomly invest $10k into one of those?

Because of these reasons:

1. I do not know enough about the industries the penny stock companies are in. I did know about Altium though but only as a subscribed user.
2. "For every winner there are hundreds of losers." I am not a risk taker.
3. It is, as you say gambling.

From the Oxford Dictionary, one definition of gambling is to take a risky action in the hope of a desired result. Putting you money into pension funds is gambling. Investing in anything is gambling. You walking across a busy road - you are gambling with your very life. Anyone who says he does not gamble is a liar or deceiving himself. We ALL gamble, including pious religious people who say they never gamble.

Now, if Altium introduced powerful AI where you just enter the parameters and the entire PCB and BOM is created for you... that would be a game changer. DFM, EMC, signal quality etc all taken care of. You may laugh, but one day this might happen, putting the likes of me out of a job.

[coppercone2]

There was a time that I thought about buying 20 to 50 bitcoins "just for fun". I think they were around 2ct around that time.

that is so unstable for all you know it would have caused the market to totally crash and burn if you bought 10 cents worth.



its true for any crazy long shot investment.

Like you go back in time, spend all your money on bitcoin, then it turns out the guy selling it was right on the thresh hold of quitting once he made a few dollars that day, it happens, then you are broke and bitcoin goes no where because he lost his drive cuz he finally made that 50$ for a warcraft game card. 


no sense in beating yourself up over past events that are that that random and unstable, because it could turn out even if you did it, the chaotic results might whoop your ass real good. their big but they barely occurred, think about how many penny stocks are totally liquidated

[SiliconWizard]

Turns out bitcoin has been a seriously incredible investment (it's literally exploding these days, but even if it's been very "unstable" - volatile - it's been on an upwards trend overall for many years), not considering any "ethical" concern you may have. Not sure "speculating" is particularly ethical per se anyway, so not all that relevant if you consider making "easy" money.

Contrary to shares though, if you want at some point to sell your bitcoins and get dollars (/euros/...) in exchange, it's not going to be as easy as it may seem if the amount is significant, unless you are yourself a banker.
I dunno, just sell 1 or 2 bitcoins currently, get the 60k/120k on your bank account from what they'll probably consider a "dodgy" source, and see what happens. You'll have less problems with shares.

[Bud]

You just declare the difference between buy and sell as additonal income. Check your country's legislation on crypto currency.