[aus_]

Free YC 2016 application:

Build website to crowdsource $292,201,338. Buy all the lotto tickets. Pay back investors 150% of their investment. Make ~ $69.5M.

(assuming lotto tickets are a $1) (someone else can figure out the break even point after taxes)

[KingMob]

Something like this happened in Virginia in early 1992. At a certain point, the jackpot/(cost of buying all numbers) ratio was high enough that an Australian business group swooped in, hiring volunteers to purchase as many tickets as possible. They only managed to cover 5 million out of 7 million possibilities (ran out of time), but they still won the lottery, winning a $27 mil jackpot.

[malbs]

It's a genuine scalability problem when you have to work out how to physically print/place that many tickets, and the mechanism by which you distribute the jobs up to all of your volunteers (are they volunteers if they're being paid?)

[malbs]

Also an extra edge to get you over the line - make sure you have a license to sell the tickets to yourself. Usually the vendors (newsagents, shops) etc that sell the tickets get a commission on each ticket ranging from 2% - 10%

It's the real free money part!

[johnpowell]

Hope someone else didn't win cutting the prize in half.

[dlib]

Famously, something akin to this was done by Voltaire in 1729 (including the crowdsourcing). See https://books.google.com/books?id=BBusxgu8-AAC&lpg=PA259&vq=...

[ecdavis]

Alternatively: a double or nothing scheme.

Crowdsource ~$146 million and only buy half the lotto tickets. For each of the ~11 million combinations of regular numbers, buy 13 tickets covering half the possible powerball numbers.

Assume you win the $800 million jackpot and lose 50% to taxes, you have $400 million left over. You spend ~$292 million to double your investors money and have ~$107 million left over.

Assume you don't win the $800 million jackpot, you still have 13 $1 million tickets left over. You can either pay that back to your investors, or keep it for yourself and point to a clause in a contract they signed saying that you'd only pay out if you won the jackpot.

Somehow I doubt it's legal to do something like that, but it's interesting nonetheless.

[LordKano]

Assume you win the $800 million jackpot and lose 50% to taxes, you have $400 million left over.

Gambling losses are tax deductible as expenses against gambling winnings.

Going with your scenario, if you spend ~$146 million and win ~$800 million, you'll be taxed on the ~$654 million profit. Off the top of my head you're looking at ~$400 million in after tax winnings.

So the investors get their ~$146 million back and then take a share of the remaining ~$400 million.

[jonlucc]

I imagine you'd have to crowdsource the purchasing as well. Asking a clerk to spend several days printing tickets might put them off.

[cookiecaper]

Don't forget the risk that there may be multiple winners, which would require splitting the jackpot.

[pc86]

It's not called Venture Capital for nothing.

[dreaminvm]

Would not work unless it ballooned into 10 figures. Lump sum taxes would take most of the gains away and that assumes you are the only winner.

[woobar]

And the advertised Jackpot isa 30 years annuity. The lump sum is ~62% of the advertised Jackpot before taxes.

[Wingman4l7]

Used to be, the lump sum wasn't offered -- you had to sell your legal rights to the annuity to an investor to get it. You could still do this -- perhaps have open bidding on it; might net more than 62%.

[LordKano]

Each ticket you purchase is an expense that will reduce your tax liability.

If you spent $500 million on tickets and won $800 million, your tax liability would only be on the $300 million profit.

[node-bayarea]

Even then don't you still have only 50% chance of winning as none of those numbers might get picked?