inputorigin•This week
I retired at 32 from my side project. Here's the path I took.
EDIT 2: Thanks for the award kind stranger! I've stopped responding to reddit comments for this post. I'm adding an FAQ to the original post based on the most common high quality questions. If you have a question that you're dying to know the answer to and that only I can help you with (vs. Google, ChatGPT, etc.), DM me.
EDIT: I love how controversial this post has become (50% upvote rate), and only in this subreddit (vs. other subreddits that I posted the same content in). I trust that the open-minded half of you will find something useful in this post and my other posts and comments.
I retired at 32 years old, in large part thanks to a B2C SaaS app that I developed on my own. Now, I don't have to work in order to cover my living expenses, and wouldn't have to work for quite a while.
In other words, I can finally sip mai tais at the beach.
I've condensed how I got there into this post. First, a super simplified timeline of events, followed by some critical details.
Timeline
2013 Graduated college in the US
2013 Started first corporate job
2013 Started side project (B2C app) that would eventually lead to my retirement
2020 Started charging for use of my B2C app (was free, became freemium)
2021 Quit my last corporate job
2022 Retired: time freedom attained
Details
First, some summary statistics of my path to retirement:
9 years: time between graduating college and my retirement.
8 years: total length of my career where I worked at some corporate day job.
7 years: time it took my B2C app to make its first revenue dollar
2 years: time between my first dollar of SaaS revenue and my retirement.
"Something something overnight success a decade in the making".
I got extremely lucky on my path to retirement, both in terms of the business environment I was in and who I am as a person. I'd also like to think that some of the conscious decisions I made along the way contributed to my early retirement.
Lucky Breaks
Was born in the US middle class.
Had a natural affinity for computer programming and entrepreneurial mindset (initiative, resourcefulness, pragmatism, courage, growth mindset). Had opportunities to develop these mindsets throughout life.
Got into a good college which gave me the credentials to get high paying corporate jobs.
Was early to a platform that saw large adoption (see "barnacle on whale" strategy).
Business niche is shareworthy: my SaaS received free media.
Business niche is relatively stable, and small enough to not be competitive.
"Skillful" Decisions
I decided to spend the nights and weekends of my early career working on side projects in the hopes that one would hit. I also worked a day job to support myself and build my savings.
My launch funnel over roughly 7 years of working on side projects:
Countless side projects prototyped.
5 side projects publically launched.
2 side projects made > $0.
1 side project ended up becoming the SaaS that would help me retire.
At my corporate day jobs, I optimized for learning and work-life balance. My learning usually stalled after a year or two at one company, so I’d quit and find another job.
I invested (and continute to do so) in physical and mental wellbeing via regular workouts, meditation, journaling, traveling, and good food. My fulfilling non-work-life re-energized me for my work-life, and my work-life supported my non-work-life: a virtuous cycle.
I automated the most time-consuming aspects of my business (outside of product development). Nowadays, I take long vacations and work at most 20 hours a week / a three-day work week .
I decided to keep my business entirely owned and operated by me. It's the best fit for my work-style (high autonomy, deep focus, fast decision-making) and need to have full creative freedom and control.
I dated and married a very supportive and inspiring partner.
I try not to succumb to outrageous lifestyle creep, which keeps my living expenses low and drastically extends my burn-rate.
Prescription
To share some aphorisms I’ve leaned with the wantrepreneurs or those who want to follow a similar path:
Maximize your at bats, because you only need one hit. Bias towards action. Launch quickly. Get your ideas out into the real world for feedback. Perfect is the enemy of good. If you keep swinging and improving, you'll hit the ball eventually.
Keep the big picture in mind. You don't necessarily need a home-run to be happy: a base hit will often do the job. Think about what matters most to you in life: is it a lot of money or status? Or is it something more satisfying, and often just as if not more attainable, like freedom, loving relationships, or fulfillment? Is what you’re doing now a good way to get what you want? Or is there a better way?
At more of a micro-level of "keep the big picture in mind", I often see talented wantrepreneurs get stuck in the weeds of lower-level optimizations, usually around technical design choices. They forget (or maybe subconsciously avoid) the higher-level and more important questions of customer development, user experience, and distribution. For example: “Are you solving a real problem?” or “Did you launch an MVP and what did your users think?”
Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you are capable of learning whatever you need to learn in order to do what you want to do.
The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure. I’ve noticed that fear of failure is the greatest thing holding people back from taking action towards their dreams. Unless failure means death in your case, a debilitating fear of failure is a surmountable mental block. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. When all is said and done, we often regret the things we didn't do in life than the things we did.
There’s more to life than just work. Blasphemous (at least among my social circle)! But the reality is that many of the dying regret having worked too much in their lives.
As Miss Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus says: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"
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