My Journey with Tesla: From Recognition to Investment

Back in 2019, I was working at a web hosting company in Wilsonville, Oregon. I started that spring, and by fall, I vividly remember suddenly seeing Teslas everywhere. Up until then, Tesla had just been this phantom company I’d only read about online—now it was right there on the streets. It was the first time Tesla really entered my worldview as something significant.

Then came 2020. Just days before everything shut down for COVID, I moved into a tiny studio apartment in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Stuck inside during lockdown—and with no boss peeking over my shoulder—I decided to make good use of the time. I dove into YouTube, learning about investing while technically still on the clock. That’s when I found finance creators like Meet Kevin. He not only owned a Tesla but was a huge fan of Cathie Wood, who had famously bet big on Tesla years earlier. Her ARK ETFs were skyrocketing, and I started watching her weekly market summaries every Friday.

Like so many others in 2020, I became part of that new wave of retail investors—thanks to a $1,200 stimulus check from the government. And what did I do with it? Tossed it straight into the stock market. At first, I felt like I’d already missed the boat on Tesla after its huge run, so I bought into other stocks like Fiverr and a few ARK ETFs instead.

Eventually, I fell into the same trap as countless investors: trying to find the next Tesla. For me, that meant NIO, the Chinese EV company. While researching NIO, I stumbled onto Steven Mark Ryan’s Solving the Money Problem channel on YouTube. His videos made a pretty convincing case—no other EV company was even close to Tesla.

Living in Lake Oswego, one of Oregon’s wealthiest communities, also had a big influence on me. Once COVID restrictions eased and traffic picked up again, I couldn’t help but notice Teslas everywhere. Remember how I first spotted them popping up near my office in Wilsonville? Well, it turns out they were all coming from here. I still remember counting 16 Teslas on a quick 20-minute drive to Subway and back for lunch one day. That’s when it really clicked for me: these cars were basically the iPhone on wheels, and the people with money had already decided this was their go-to daily driver.

By April 2021, I finally jumped in and bought my first fractional shares of Tesla at $724 a share ($241 post-split). Since then, I’ve been steadily dollar-cost averaging into the stock, bit by bit.