Page 214 - The Way to the Top

Alberto VILAR

Founder and President of Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc.

I have spent the last three-plus decades investing in emerging electronic
and health care technologies, both as a venture capitalist and as an investor
in the first few years of the public stock market life of new companies.

Over the years, I was a very early investor in a good number of the most
successful companies technology ever generated, such as Microsoft,
Oracle, Cisco, AOL, and Amgen. Because the technology of each of these
companies was new and unproven when I invested, and because there were

no real markets for the new technologies at the time the investments were
made, I had to learn the hard way, which was by experience, as opposed to
through advice. Over the years, I learned two principles of technology
investing. First, be very early in investing in a new sector; and second,

initiate a major investment and stick with it through all the walls of worry
young companies are forced to climb due to market uncertainties, gossip,
regulation, and economic cycles. Real money is made by identifying key
new industrial sectors at a very early stage and then proceeding to invest

in the companies likely to gain a dominant share of that sector’s market.
(In the 1990s my investments in Cisco and AOL increased 1,200-fold.)

Invest early and stick to your choice