How Teslas Pulled Me Into the World of Investing

Back in 2019, I landed my first office job out of college at a web hosting company in Wilsonville, Oregon. It was the spring, and I was just settling into my new routine—coffee runs, meeting the team, figuring out what “office life” actually meant. Then, one day in the fall, I noticed something odd: Teslas. Everywhere.

Until that moment, Tesla had been this phantom company I only read about online—headlines, articles, a few viral tweets—but now, suddenly, they were real. I’d see one parked outside a coffee shop, another cruising down the street. It was like a switch flipped, and Tesla became significant in my world.

Fast forward to 2020. Just days before everything shut down for COVID, I moved into a tiny studio apartment in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Locked inside, with no boss hovering over me, I decided to put my time to use. I dove deep into YouTube, teaching myself about investing while “technically” still on the clock. That’s when I discovered creators like Meet Kevin, a guy who not only owned a Tesla but was a huge fan of Cathie Wood—who had famously bet big on Tesla years earlier. I started following Wood’s weekly market summaries religiously, fascinated by the way she saw opportunities before anyone else.

Then came the stimulus checks. Like so many others in 2020, I found myself with $1,200 and nowhere else to put it but the stock market. At first, I thought I’d missed the Tesla rocket and invested in other opportunities—Fiverr, some ARK ETFs—trying to catch the wave somehow.

I quickly fell into the same trap countless investors do: hunting for the “next Tesla.” That’s how I found NIO, the Chinese EV company. And while digging into NIO, I stumbled upon Steven Mark Ryan’s Solving the Money Problem channel on YouTube. His videos made a simple yet convincing case: no other EV company was even close to Tesla.

Living in Lake Oswego added another layer to the lesson. As restrictions eased, I noticed Teslas everywhere—luxury on wheels blending into the everyday. On a quick 15-minute drive to Subway, I counted 16 Teslas. That’s when it really hit me: these cars weren’t just a fad. They were the iPhone on wheels, and people with money had already decided this was their daily driver.

By April 2021, I finally pulled the trigger, buying my first fractional shares of Tesla at $724 a share ($241 post-split). Since then, I’ve been steadily dollar-cost averaging, adding a little bit here and there. Looking back, it wasn’t just about a stock—it was about seeing the future take shape right in front of me and deciding to be a part of it.