I just learned a great investing story about Shaq. Yes, that Shaq. Back in 1999, he demonstrated a principle most people forget to talk about: stay open, stay curious, and always be ready to say hello. Not every great investment is PE ratio or a technical indicator.

Sometimes, it’s literally just “hello.”

The story starts in 1999, and while sitting in the Beverly Hills Hotel lobby, Shaq could have easily minded his own business, but instead, he overheard two tech employees talking about their company. It sounded cool, it sounded big, so he went a said hello.

Now, not everyone is Shaq. And so naturally he may been greeted a little differently than most of us, but still, the art of saying hello gave him this chance and it’ll give you a chance. That conversation started with a “hello” and ended with a “I want to invest.”

What company was this in 1999? Google.

Getting into Google’s Series A round five years before their IPO was more than just luck. It was the result of saying being curious and just saying listening to the things around you. Here it from the best center of this era of basketball on why he was one of the only people to get in on the Series A investment round: