Hollywood, or Silicon Valley: Where’s the Money?

Last year, “The Dark Knight Rises” was one of the top-grossing films of 2012, racking up $1 billion in worldwide box-office sales. That same year, Instagram, the photo-sharing site based in Silicon Valley, was also one of the top-grossing commercial tech deals of the year; Facebook bought it for $1 billion. So which was a better return on investment, the Hollywood hit or the Silicon Valley wonder? If you really want a sure bet, the answer is neither, said Ilya A. Strebulaev, a professor of finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, who advised caution before whipping out your checkbook to finance either the next movie or start-up. Both industries, he pointed out, are unpredictable and unstable, and not the ideal way to make money.