But that's not how shares work. And companies aren't lotteries.

In your example, the additional 1,000 lottery tickets might add nothing whatsoever to the value of the winning lottery ticket in your hand. It's just not a good metaphor. That's not how buying shares in a company works. Investors don't invest using bearer instruments of totally unknown value. They invest using cash. Cash always adds the value of the cash. That's intrinsic to it being cash.

A much better way to think about it is that you have something in your hand that's worth X dollars and has Y shares. If somebody were to give you X dollars in investment in exchange for Y additionally issued shares, then at the end of that operation the company, by definition, would be worth $2x, and your Y shares would be exactly half of that value, meaning that you start with X and you end with X.

As mentioned, knowing exactly what the company is worth in dollars is a little tricky, but that's the premise, and it completely makes sense.

Back to your lottery ticket example: let’s say you had a company with assets consisting solely of a winning scratch-off lottery ticket worth $1,000, and then you agreed to sell half the company to an investor who contributed $1,000 in cash. At the end of the exercise you would have a company worth exactly $2,000 (the company's assets include the lottery ticket and the new $1,000 of invested cash) and you would own exactly half of it.

If you have a unique skill at buying scratch-off lottery tickets and can turn that $1,000 in cash into more than $1,000 in lottery tickets, then you and the investor win from the transaction. That's what the investor is betting on.

If you can't get those results then the investors shouldn't invest in you and you shouldn't seek investment.

> In your example, the additional 1,000 lottery tickets might add nothing whatsoever to the value of the winning lottery ticket in your hand

They add greatly to your expected chance of winning, given you have pooled winnings.