'The capital will find you': Bill Ackman says what you know is more important than who you know — and 1 skill is crucial

Bill Ackman, the 60-year-old billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, recently spoke to James Dumoulin from The School of Hard Knocks about how he became such a successful investor and what advice he’d give to young entrepreneurs just starting out. “The biggest challenge when you’re young is you want to make money really fast,” Ackman said in the interview . “That’s almost in investing a guaranteed bad outcome.”

Asked what matters more in business — what you know, or who you know — Ackman said “what you know is more important. The ideas are more valuable than the relationships.”

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“If you have a great creative brilliant idea, the capital will find you,” he added.

That’s a pretty appropriate line considering Pershing Square Inc., the parent company of Ackman’s hedge fund, just completed its IPO in April , trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “PS,” after a billion-dollar billion private funding round in 2024 valued his company at around $10.5 billion . Ackman himself is worth around $9 billion, according to Bloomberg .

Pressed on which industry holds the most opportunity right now, Ackman had very clear directions for young entrepreneurs and recent grads: “Learn everything there is to know about AI,” he said. “Start learning how to code using Claude Code. Build a company. It’s the greatest period of time in history for entrepreneurship.”