In 1999, Bonnie Brown was recently divorced, nearly broke, and sleeping on her sister's couch. No savings. No portfolio. No connections.
She had a massage therapy license and a willingness to take a job that paid $450 a week.
The job was at a small startup called Google. Fewer than 50 employees. Operating out of a converted garage. Nobody outside a small circle of engineers had heard of it.
Brown did something unusual: she negotiated stock options as part of her compensation. Most people in her position would have asked for more cash.
Five Years Later, She Never Had to Work Again
On August 19, 2004, Google went public at $85 per share.
Bonnie Brown, the part-time masseuse who had been sleeping on a couch, became a multi-millionaire overnight. Not because she was a tech genius. Not because she had wealthy parents. But because she positioned herself in a technology company before it went public.
Today she lives in a 3,000-square-foot house in Nevada. She runs a charitable foundation. Her financial concerns are, by her own account, nonexistent.
Google's IPO created over 900 millionaires. Most of them weren't engineers. They were regular employees who positioned themselves before the company went public.
The Same Window Is Open Right Now
SpaceX is expected to go public this summer in what could be the largest IPO in history.
The company completed 134 orbital launches last year — more than every other nation on Earth combined. It controls 84% of all satellite mass delivered to orbit. Starlink revenue grew from $1.4 billion to over $6.6 billion in two years.
Then SpaceX merged with xAI at a $1.25 trillion valuation and filed with the FCC to build one million orbital AI satellites. One former tech executive says that filing changes everything about how this company should be valued.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America have been selected as underwriters. Bloomberg reports the S-1 filing could come at any time.
You Don't Need to Work at SpaceX to Get In
Bonnie Brown got in because she worked at Google. That was the only path available.
That's no longer the case. A former senior executive at Qualcomm, NXP Semiconductors, and Juniper Networks has published free research showing how everyday Americans can position themselves before the SpaceX IPO, starting with as little as $500.
His name is Jeff Brown. He flagged Nvidia in 2016 before its AI breakout and recommended Tesla before it hit $1 trillion. His latest research focuses entirely on SpaceX — and why most analysts are valuing it wrong.
The window Bonnie Brown had at Google is open again. The difference is, this time you don't need to work at the company.
