Long term startup speculation

The course is about how one can invest in startups for the purpose of making money. It goes on to say that it's not as difficult or risky and there are certain strategies you should follow if this interests them at all, but first let me tell y'all what I know...
I'm here because my company has been burned by bad investments before - twice actually! The first time was when they lost everything during dot com crash (which happens rarely) so now we focus more heavily into tech stocks which have done well lately due largely from people investing cash flow instead because profits don't matter quite as much compared with other asset Classes such us real estate where values always go up regardless whether someone builds anything new around