Airbnb

Renowned capitalist Fred Wilson turned down an offer to fund Airbnb which is considered to be “one of the best startups to come our way in the past few years.” Wilson was found saying that he couldn’t wrap his head around “air mattresses on living room floors as the next hotel room” and did not chase the deal. Today this startup is valued at a whopping $1 billion.

YouTube

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, in an interview with New York Times admitted that he missed out an opportunity to invest in this video portal during 2005 for 30 percent of its stake for just $11.5 million. Today, this company is estimated to have a great net worth and Citi gave a recent estimation that this video site will generate more than $3.6 billion in gross revenue per annum.  

iPod and iPhone

The idea of a Napster like service for purchasing songs was first developed by computer scientist Tony Fadell, he approached many investors including Philips and Real Networks but everybody failed to see the value of his idea. Later he approached Steve Jobs who was fascinated with this idea and worked it out in the very famous iPod and iPhone, which is considered to be the most successful products of Apple Inc.

Salesforce and Pandora

The very famous investor Ron Conway passed on the opportunity to invest in Salesforce for $30 million as he thought the investment demand seemed to be high. Conway also regrets his decision to turn down another famous company Pandora.

Zynga

David Tisch a very famous angel investor was approached by Mark Pincus in the early stages of Zynga to invest in his company but Tisch did not show any interest in it because the concept of Zynga didn’t make much sense to him.