How I Invest Outside My Business in 2026 – eComFuel

I believe you should build your personal balance sheet alongside your business. This is one of the eight pillars of financial mastery that I write about.

If you’re betting everything on a future exit that may or may not happen, you’re taking a huge risk. Building your personal net worth alongside your business gives you opportunity, security and allows you to make better decisions because you are not desperate.

So I’m going to start sharing what my portfolio looks like and track my performance each year vs. S&P. Here is my basic plan for 2026.

How do I calculate it?

Quick note: I do not include my primary residence, physical assets, or my business in these numbers.

Your home is a consumption, not an investment. Physical assets are not investable assets. And your business is illiquid and volatile until you sell it – including giving you a false sense of security. I think it’s cleaner to track what you have in actual liquid investments separately.

Distribution

3.5% of individual shares.

I think investing should be 90% boring and 10% daring. You should have a few bets if you have a deep conviction in a space that you think will do better, but they should be few and far between. And you should make sure the position size is big enough that if you are right, they actually count.

My two positions: Shopify and Cloudflare.

Shopify is the closest thing to an e-commerce monopoly outside of Amazon. There’s simply no other good choice in the hosted software space, and it’s getting stronger every year. I’m a Shopify long time.

Cloudflare I know a little less about their ins and outs, but everyone I’ve talked to loves them and my own experience has been great. They do a lot of things well and seem to have a strong culture.

63% index funds.

Mostly total US market, about 15% international, zero bonds. Boring and deliberate. I’m working on increasing my international exposure a bit – international stocks have been on a tear this year and I think there’s still room based on valuations, plus it’s good diversification. But the bottom line is simple: broad market index funds, low fees, hold forever.

12% cryptocurrency.

Primarily Bitcoin and Ethereum. They still believe that the original thesis as a non-institutional government store of value and hedge against monetary policy has gone wrong.

That said, it’s a little worrying that it’s been behaving more like a risk asset than digital gold lately. Gold is up more than 70% in the last 12 months. Bitcoin hasn’t kept up, which is strange for something that’s supposed to be “digital gold.”

But I like the fundamentals over the long term, I have some gains I don’t want to take a tax hit on, and it’s a meaningful diversification play as an anti-institutional hedge. The more institutions buy it and the bigger it gets, the lower the growth and the more volatility – but I’m still holding on.

11% of real estate.

One property for rent. Honestly, it’s not a great pure investment – more like a house we love that we’re renting out until we decide what to do with it.

Starting and running Airbnb for the past four months has given me a new appreciation for how much work short-term rentals are, even when someone else manages them. It also made me appreciate how good Airbnb is as a traveler – walk in, use it for a few days, pay and leave without the headache.

9% in cash.

I like having a cushion, especially when the markets are at all-time highs. Half of that is earmarked for a “big bet” fund – waiting for one or two highly compelling opportunities where I can bet meaningfully. We are looking for them in 2026.

Less than 1% of private investment.

Three small bets on founders I trust: IntelliGems, Postpilot, and Kanpai Foods. All three have built great companies.

I haven’t put a lot of money into working on the private side. It’s interesting when you have domain expertise and get opportunities with people you trust, but it’s a small part of the overall portfolio.

Two sales this year

Tesla. I kept the Tesla for about four years. Good run. But I sold this year for several reasons.

My original thesis was the product – the car was so good and people were so happy with it. But the company appears to be shifting from a car company to a big bet on robotics, self-driving and automated taxis. Not that it didn’t work, but my original thesis changed and I didn’t do my homework to evaluate if the other stuff was worth a trillion plus valuation.

The key man risk also increases with Elon. He’s aged, worked insanely hard all his life, and spreads across many societies. This risk increases every year.

At a trillion plus value, my original thesis changed, I felt it was a good time to leave.

Airbnb. This was one of my worst decisions in recent memory. I made a stupid investment – I heard someone recommend it and bought it because I wasn’t sure what else to do with the money. A classic mistake.

I held it for six to twelve months, broke and sold. After starting my own Airbnb this year, I realized that I’m not as optimistic about the company as I thought. They’re not terrible, but they’ve lacked growth for years and I’m not sure what’s the catalyst for the change.

Biggest lesson: don’t bet 5 out of 10 beliefs on individual stocks. If you don’t have high conviction, put it in an index fund.

That’s the baseline

At the end of the year I will report how it did against the S&P.

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