Data Center Investor: "I Turned $40M Into $140M Before Anyone Noticed" | Ep. 452 with Anita Verma-Lallian

Anita Verma-Lallian (0:00)

We bought a piece of property for $40 million and then sold it for about $140 million.

Daniel (0:05)

$1.5 billion portfolio, over a billion in transactions. $51 million deal next to Bill Gates' Smart City. Anita Verma-Lallian doesn't build AI. She owns the land it can't exist without.

Anita Verma-Lallian (0:20)

So if you can't get the land, you can't really build AI. The amount of sites that can actually get approval for data centers is really shrinking. I think the statistic is 40% of all data center projects are getting shut down.

Daniel (0:34)

What's an investment lesson that completely changed how you look at wealth?

Anita Verma-Lallian (0:38)

One that I think really has had the biggest impact on me is a...

Daniel (0:48)

What's different about the way that billion-dollar entrepreneurs see opportunities compared to everyone else?

Anita Verma-Lallian (0:57)

That's a great question. I think billion-dollar entrepreneurs look for patterns and they try to position themselves ahead of where everybody else is. The way that I look at investing, I think there's three different layers. The first layer is people invest at a level where everybody's already investing, we're competing with other investors.

At that point, the headlines are there, everyone's talking about it, so your margins are more compressed.

Then there's a second layer where you have less people looking, people are starting to go in that direction. Then the third layer is the place where nobody's at, you're the first one there. That's the layer that I like to be in. It's more uncomfortable, it's not proven yet. But I think that's where a lot of people that are making the billion-dollar decisions are comfortable being, is having that conviction that the growth will come or the opportunity will come. An example of this is SpaceX. Anyone who invested in SpaceX five or ten years ago is seeing the rewards now. People that are investing in SpaceX now, once it's IPO-ed, the margins are not going to be as high as the people that invested early on. So I think it's just having that foresight to know that this is going to grow into something big.

Daniel (2:18)

So when you've heard about it publicly, it's pretty much too late. I have to laugh at SpaceX because I've seen the funniest skits around people. They're pretending to tell themselves, I'm going to invest in SpaceX, and they're like, don't invest in SpaceX, if they could tell themselves a few months ago.

How do people get access, though, to this information before it's become public? How would five, 10 years ago, would I have even known to invest in SpaceX?

Anita Verma-Lallian (2:45)

That's a good question. I think you have to go to your network. I think you have to identify an area that you're interested in. So, in the example of SpaceX, it's tech. So, you talk to people that are in that sector and see what the different technologies are, what the different companies are, and just sort of research and see where you see things going and see who's involved in that. Now, that's if you want to invest in a company. If you want to start your own company or be an entrepreneur, I think it's a little different. You look for trends. You try to solve for problems that are going to arise in the future.

One example is when I started my company, we started buying land and we weren't focused on areas that were existing growth and development was happening. We were maybe five or ten miles away from that because that's where the next wave of growth was going to hit. So we were able to position ourselves there and we were able to buy land at a much cheaper value.

And then there was appreciation that happened over the years. So I think it's a matter of getting there before everyone else.

Daniel (3:52)

My wife has always loved buying land. I used to laugh. She was like, I'm buying this land. I'm like, why are you buying land? And then I hear, you know, I remember Bill Gates was buying all of a sudden all this land. I'm thinking, why are people buying land? What is the value of land? What do you see as the value of land now that you've obviously struck gold in this AI boom?

Anita Verma-Lallian (4:13)

I think what I love about land is it's a very tangible asset. A lot of companies' stocks can go to zero. Real estate is a real asset that's always going to have value.

If you are strategic about how you buy land, if you're buying in a growing area where, you know, like Phoenix, for instance, it's been one of the fastest growing cities for years. And if you're very strategic about the locations you're buying and the path of growth, I think that's what I think makes a lot of sense. When you are looking at AI infrastructure, it's a completely different scenario. You're looking at where is the infrastructure, where's the power? And that's really what everyone's following right now, is where can you get land with power? So that's what my focus has been, is trying to get ahead of everybody else and find land that has power.