'The capital will find you': Bill Ackman says what you know is more important than who — and one skill is critical for young people starting out

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.”

“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.

The one skill Ackman says young people can’t afford to skip

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.”

It’s true that while the labor market is in a tough place right now, it’s considerably friendlier to those who are skilled up in the latest artificial intelligence tools. PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer found that workers with AI skills command a 56% wage premium over peers in the same roles — more than double the 25% premium recorded a year earlier. And according to Handshake’s 2026 graduate report, about 10% of internships and 4% of full-time early-career postings now reference AI tools, which is nearly double the share from just a year earlier.

Persistence pays off

Ackman graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, got his MBA from Harvard Business School, and launched his first fund with capital from family and Harvard contacts. Ackman says he is still met by doubters “periodically,” but insists the key to success is all about persistence — and paying it forward.

“I remembered smiling and dialing, getting rejected, and I said, look, someday when I’m successful, I’m always going to take that call,” he said. “Every successful person was not a straight line up. Never give up.”