Dear Startup Investor,

Neil here. When I started my first business, people thought I was crazy.

I was just a teenager. I didn’t have a lot of money. And I definitely didn’t know the right people (the Silicon Valley heavy hitters and top venture capitalists of the world).

But I did it. I launched my business – and even though I made some small mistakes early on, I eventually found solid footing. Every single failure taught me a new, and extremely valuable, lesson that I could carry with me to my next project. I learned how to attract investors, how to retain customers, how to budget for advertising and marketing, how to scale… and so on.

And I learned all of that by myself. There was no one there to hold my hand and tell me what to do.

My success came from trial and error – and when I became an angel investor, I found the same thing to be true. Some of my investments have kicked back nice returns, some have gone completely belly up, and a couple turned out to be massive home runs.

With every investment I made, I refined my own formula for finding the best deals. If you’ve been here for a while, you already know it: the 1,000X Formula. That the right idea… at the right time… with the right team has the potential to kick back 1,000X returns.

But throughout the years, I quickly learned the startup investing ecosystem wasn’t always built for people like you and me… people who weren’t born with silver spoons in our mouths… people who have never had Andreessen Horowitz on speed dial… and people who truly understand the value of every single dollar.

I didn’t “know a guy” who helped me get started. I built my network and my deal flow from scratch. And after I forged my own path, I wanted to make these same opportunities more accessible to everyone. Why should hardworking people be locked out of incredible investing opportunities, just because they weren’t born into society’s upper echelons? It never seemed fair to me.

Luckily, that landscape is changing… and we’ve watched it happen in real time, right here at the Network. Now more than ever, startups are turning to retail investors to fund their ventures through more accessible public platforms (around $117 million was raised for Reg. CF raises alone last quarter).

But there’s still plenty of work to be done. Across the investing spectrum, there are still far too many people out there who are unwilling to share their knowledge, their deal flow, their network, and more.

These people sit in their offices, shaking hands, making deals, and hiding their best strategies from the people who deserve to know them the most. Myself, along with our entire Advisory Board, have made it our mission to beat them at that game.

In fact, I’ve made it a point to fill my own network with people who align with that same mission. I don’t like associating with people who purposely build walls between you and the market’s best wealth opportunities… which is why I was so excited to meet Mark Sebastian, who I introduced you to last week.

If you read last week’s issue, you’ll remember that Mark was fired from the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, simply for suggesting to his boss that they create educational programs to teach their clients useful trading strategies that could produce real, outsized returns.

His boss – and many people on Wall Street – believe that those kinds of tricks (the ones that have made them a fortune) don’t belong in the hands of everyday folks. Instead, Wall Street’s top dogs keep them locked away for their own benefit, while their clients might get lucky to see a couple of single-digit returns once in a while.

When Mark left CBOE two decades ago, his mission became clear. He wanted to take those strategies public, and tell the world how to play them… often for a buy in of $100 or less.

And today, he’s going live with his biggest secret yet. He’s listed it as his own number-one trading strategy, and it’s one that Wall Street does not want you to know. He told me it’s such a controversial event that he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to do anything like this again.

Mark gave me the go-ahead to invite you in again today. And I suggest you take advantage here… this could very well be a once-in-a-lifetime chance (and it’s completely free to attend, so you don’t have anything to lose by at least listening to him).

Just click here to join his meeting now. Have a great day, and I’ll be back soon with another update.

Until next time,

Neil Patel