Hey folks. It has been a couple years and for the people who have been checking in with me here and there, I wanted to post an update. My last update was a couple years ago, in which I shared that I was selling my company for $20M:

Edit: I just realized that like half of my original post was deleted. Did a bot do that? I'll add the context now. Stay tuned.

The rest:

So back when I last posted, I had just signed a deal to sell my company for $20M. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for me in the end), that deal fell through when the buyer failed to obtain the necessary financing.

So it was back to the grindstone. I got the sales up to about $30M/yr and profit up to $5M/yr, and then another offer came in for about $25M. I accepted that, went through the process, and as of a few weeks ago the money is in the bank. No takesies bakesies!

I'm maintaining a decent percent ownership and will remain the operator of the company. So, it's kind of business as usual only operating with someone else's money and not mine.

I don't have a whole lot else to add that wasn't covered in the last post, but just wanted to share another success story. There's not magic to it. You just gotta work. Get your product and sell. No self-help books or phoney social media influencers necessary.

https://preview.redd.it/5ov4ctvx5nje1.jpg?width=806&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3abf7223d38d737cb05e642a9874699a80300a00

I sold a company back in 2022 that I ran for about 15 years.

For background, the company I sold is a data licensing company.

The company that I ended up selling it to essentially breached the agreement and stopped paying me.

They owe me $85k which has been accruing 5% interest per month for the last about 18 months.

The problem is I don't have the money to sue them.

I talked to a few lawyers about it and to take them to court would would be about $100-200k.

They also owe me on royalties and I have no idea what these would be because they never shared with me financials (which also breached the contract).

The CEO of the acquiring company is basically a SoB and a thief and doesn't deserve any benefit of the doubt here.

Here's what I'm thinking of doing. It's very risky for me but I think more so for them.

I need to make it clear that giving me my money is easier than any risk of not paying me.

Here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to buy all their alias domains. org, net, io, info etc domains as they haven't purchased the main alternatives.

It will cost me like $100 or so.

Then I'm going to write up a document (or record a video) explaining that they bought my company in 2022 but are in breach so as far as I'm concerned I still own the company (I owned 100% before I sold).

Therefore they are in breach of my intellectual property and to contact me directly for a license.

Then I'm going to ad retargeting against them so that any visit to the LEGIT acme site pushes retargeted ads against them.

So ALL their existing customers and NEW customers (and employees) will start seeing this video explaining that this Acme is is now in a VERY precarious IP licensing situation.

It would also basically block any potential future acquisitions.

I want to be careful not to defame anyone here or break any laws so I think I am going to get a lawyer to review what I'm going to post.

However, I also can't afford to spend massive amounts of money on lawyers.

I had something very terrible happen to me personally after I sold the company which is why I don't have the finances to pursue a full on lawsuit.

I'm still trying to recover from this and had I received all my funds from the acquisition I would be just fine.

I’m a 28-year-old single male. I grew up in a small midwestern town, went to college there, and had a job lined up at a Fortune 500 tech company after graduation. Life seemed like it was on track. I worked there for 2.5 years, but then, I decided to leave for a startup job that was remote. I moved to Dallas in June of 2022, wanting more personal growth and development.

Things were fine initially, but in April 2023, I was laid off. Thankfully, I received severance and unemployment, but the job search from April 2023 to October 2023 was tough. I couldn’t land anything, and maybe I was just being picky.

In January 2024, I decided to start my own business while still hunting for work. The business was doing well in the first few months, but I didn’t have proper budgeting and was pulling money out for bills. By the summer of 2024, the business started crashing. I kept pushing, hoping for a break, but the pressure mounted.

In October 2024, I landed a job, but in December 2024, I was terminated for working while on PTO – which was against HR policy. That’s when everything hit me. My business had failed, I lost money, and now I was back to square one. Panic, anxiety, and fear set in. I was barely sleeping or eating and started to spiral into sadness and self-hatred.

The reality hit me hard. I’ve been reckless with money – I gambled it in stocks and memes during the pandemic, hoping it would lift my family out of poverty. I didn’t take my career seriously and spent more time partying and exploring instead of focusing on my future. I keep telling myself that if I hadn’t made all these poor choices, I’d be in a much better place right now.

I feel resentful, regretful, and filled with “what ifs.” Maybe if I stayed home when I was laid off, or didn’t take the risk to move to Dallas, or didn’t gamble away my savings, I would’ve been in a different place in life. But here I am, back living at home with my parents in a cramped space. It’s tough to see my friends progressing in their careers and relationships while I feel stuck.

Right now, I have around $35K to my name, $18K of which is in my 401k and $2K in a Roth IRA. But I also have $16K in credit card debt, not to mention the money lost in my business. I’m considering moving back to Dallas and living with my old roommates if I can find a job there.

I’m trying to move forward, but it feels like I’m running out of time and every step I take feels like a setback. I want to learn from my mistakes and rebuild, but right now, I’m just not sure where to start.

If you’ve been in a similar situation or have any advice, I’d really appreciate it. I just feel lost, and it’s hard to stay hopeful.

I finally made my million dollars….. Wanted to share my story with the community in short. I quit a very high paying engineering job at a big tech in Bay Area in 2022. AI was on the rise, I always had ideas about building AI agents to help small businesses that couldn’t afford a complete marketing team. Built a SaaS product that helped businesses send personalized emails to their end customers. I grew the revenue to $300K, 3 years later just hustling on my own. One of my big customers acquired the product for $1.5M.

I m sure it would grow to bigger valuation, but I am looking to work on scalable business ideas at the moment.

Why can some entrepreneurs (think Alex Hormozi) start multiple successful businesses while most people struggle to start one?

I just wanted to know what are some industries which will always print money no matter what , like even if there is recession the industry will not get much affected by it.

last year I saw a startup fall apart after making a single bad senior hire

the product was good, they had some seed funding, they were a small team but one toxic senior dev wrecked the engineering culture in just 3 months

I've seen this so many times since, usually with startups with <15 employees so I started taking notes on the warning signs

when building a team, some founders try to go for the shiniest possible resumes without thinking about culture or what it takes to actually work at a startup.

from an engineering point of view, working at a startup is completely different than working at an enterprise company. regardless of how shiny or big that company is, speed makes or breaks a company in the early days

in the case above, the founders hired a really senior dev when they were just a group of 4

as soon as he joined immediately said "everything needs to be rewritten"

• they spend weeks building the "right architecture"
• the codebase gets way more complex
• the team ships less and less
• suddenly everything is "tech debt"

unfortunately most founders don't spot this when doing interviews as these people know how to talk the talk and obviously know how to code.

and don't get me started about using AI interviews, which are complete BS

from what I've seen here's how to spot these patterns when hiring

here's the problem - normal interviews won't catch any of this. toxic seniors and good seniors both nail algorithm questions and system design challenges.

what works better:

• have them review actual PRs from your codebase
• ask how they'd split up a big feature for a team
• dig into how they've handled disagreements
• ask "who on your team got promoted because of your help?"

I've found that one toxic senior hire hurts more than just leaving the job open.

what patterns have you seen? I'm collecting more examples.

Ever sat down to work, only to find yourself suddenly interested in deep cleaning your entire apartment? Or watching just one YouTube video, only to end up two hours into a documentary on a topic you didn’t even care about?

Yeah, same.

For the longest time, I thought procrastination was just bad time management. If I could just plan better, schedule better, focus better, I’d stop putting things off. But it turns out, procrastination isn’t a time problem, it’s an emotion problem.

Psychologists define procrastination as delaying a task, even when you know it would be better to do it now. But why do we do that?

Adam Grant explains that procrastination happens because of how a task makes us feel. If something seems overwhelming, uncertain, or just plain uncomfortable, we push it away. Not because we’re lazy, but because our brains crave short-term relief.

And avoiding the task feels easier than facing it.

I saw this play out in my own work. I’d avoid writing that email, launching that idea, making that decision.

Not because I was busy, but because it made me feel exposed. Imposter syndrome, self-doubt, fear of failure—all that fun stuff.

And the worst part? I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

The real fix wasn’t “better time management.” It was learning to manage my emotions.

Breaking things into tiny, non-threatening steps. Treating everything like an experiment instead of a pass/fail test. Choosing action over perfection. It’s uncomfortable, but so is staying stuck.

Have you ever put something off, not because you didn’t have time, but because it made you feel something you didn’t want to deal with?

What tricks do you use to push past it?

As a beginner with no education on stocks, etc.

Been sharing my story in public before, and wanted to spread the word again as I crossed $2K monthly revenue mark lately, and pretty much secured my living expenses (I live in low COL country).

I've used Cursor + Claude to build a full-stack SaaS product, a faceless AI video generation web app (Autofeed.ai if you'd like to check it out).

I have a non-coding background and before doing this I only knew basics of html + css. I had an idea how coding works, how to use IDE, I wasn't entirely dumb but I did not know how to build a functional app.

I've started around a year ago but the real dev process happened in the last 3-4 months. Before that I felt that AI models weren't good enough to produce functioning apps (that is if you want to build a working back-end, auth, etc.)

How it went - TLDR - a rollercoaster of emotions lol. It was tough and incredible at the same time.

I got the idea from a similar platform that was successful. Jumped straight into AI, didn't really thought about frameworks etc (big mistake). It went fine until it didn't. Code became too cumbersome to maintain, AI was hallucinating. I've deleted everything. Biggest harsh lesson - I learned that setting up environment and frameworks BEFORE jumping into AI coding is crucial.

Second try - I asked Claude to map out the platform, set infra, give me run down what are we going to build and how. This helped MASSIVELY. I also moved to Cursor at this point. I've learned how to understand frameworks, what React is, how does the project structure look like etc.

I continued building. I quickly learned that you cannot let AI make mistakes, you should try nailing it down on first prompt, otherwise you risk iterating on a shitty code. Models became better and better and I had many "holy shit" moments when Cursor one-shotted sophisticated stuff like auth without any mistake. I had many frustrations but I kept pushing, restoring previous versions, splitting tasks to smaller pieces, and continued moving forward.

I had a working app in roughly 60 days (I was spending 24/7 on this lol). I then put all my efforts into marketing, mostly organic social media (series of AI UGC non-brand affiliated accounts). Many things didn't work out (like SEO or using own content to promote), but some did, and did very well.

I crossed $2k MRR today.

I'm beyond happy. I'm aware of a huge technical debt and code that works but is not efficient. I frankly don't care too much as paying users clearly prove that distribution is what matters. App is pretty simple and I can understand enough to continue growing it.

My biggest joy in all this is that I think I actually learned how to code, with an AI assistant. I understand fundamentals, I spot mistakes myself, I can fix small stuff without AI.

I know hardcore coders will say yOu DoNt KnOw AnYtHiNg YoUr CoDe Is ShIt - yeah I know that. It doesn't matter. I firmly believe the role of a 'coder' will transform into a prompt engineering. No one will be writing code manually and you will have people running tens of small-scale apps written by AI.

Anyway, wanted to share this as motivation for all non-technical folks - just dive in and learn as you go. AI tech is actually magical now and you CAN build incredible stuff with it, provided you want to learn and don't give up too easily.

Good luck everyone!

We’ve all been there—making tons of decisions in the early days of building a business. Some are easy, others... not so much. But I’m curious—what was that one decision you made early on that turned out to be a total game-changer for your business down the line?

It could be a bold move you took, an unexpected strategy, a key hire, or even a risk that paid off big time. Let’s hear your stories!

Title

Hi, not attempting to self promo, just need to state name of a brand I own for relevance to the topic. I have a music retreat I run called "Underground Retreats", and I am looking to create an overhead brand that encompasses that as well as a few other brands I own. Kind of like Meta is to IG & Facebook.

This brand will be used as:
- a media outlet / news / promo page
- a music publication
- host of my music retreats

as well as a few other general music things like studios down the line. If anyone has the suggestion for a name & I end up using it, I will send you $100.

I am very inspired by names such as:
-Lyrical Lemonade
-Overcast
-Good Music Co

I'm open to abstract or non-abstract names, preferably shorter.

Thanks in advance!!

EDIT: I just QUIT!!!

During paternity leave, I built and sold 14 tables in 60 days, pulling in $5K while working ~4 hours a day on most days. That hustle helped me build connections to source wood smarter, refine my craft, and invest in power tools to cut time and boost margins.

I also built a solid rep on FB Marketplace, 4.8 stars, where I sold the tables. This isn’t a reckless jump; I’ve planned it out, and I’ve got over a year’s worth of savings (not touching it if I can help it).

Now, as I go all in, what’s the one lesson I should keep top of mind?

• Lovable $5M ARR (20 people)
• Bolt. new $20M ARR (30 people)
• Cursor $100M RR (20 people)
• Elevenlabs $100M ARR (30 people)
• Mid journey $200M ARR (10 people)

How long do you think untill we see 1 person unicorn?

On the flip side, what’s something you never thought you’d pay someone else to do, but now you can’t imagine doing it yourself?

I’m 30M, and two years ago, I took the leap into entrepreneurship with a close friend. We started a hospitality business, and I was so sure we’d figure things out as we went. I had an MBA, knew how businesses operated on paper, and honestly, I’ve been overconfident my whole life—so I thought, "How hard could it be?"

Turns out, learning comes with a price tag. And we paid it.

We made mistakes, expensive ones. At first, my business partner and I were in sync—Bonnie and Clyde. We had complementary skills, the same hunger, the same drive. But over time, I noticed small lies creeping in. Avoidable ones. And slowly, we started seeing the business completely differently. There was no fixing it. I eventually left.

That entire phase wrecked more than just my bank balance. My personal life took a hit, my confidence crumbled, and for the first time in my life, I felt stuck.

Now, after some time to process it all, I know I want to start again—maybe in a year or two. I have good ideas (some vetted by industry titans), and I know I have the skills. But here’s the thing… I don’t feel the same excitement anymore. The spark is there, but it’s flickering. And that bothers me.

So, I want to hear from those of you who’ve been through this. If you failed the first time and found your way back, how did you do it? How did you rebuild your confidence? What changed for you the second time?

I’d love to hear real stories—your mistakes, your turning points, the moments that got you back in the game.

Because right now, I’m just trying to believe that round two can be different.

Cheers!

Edit:

Thank you all for your response! Means a lot that you all took the time to respond.

If anyone needs some probono/minimum expense project basis work (I'm just looking to learn), feel free to contact me. I'm always happy to have a conversation :)

Okay, so here’s the situation. The chargeback is for “Product Unacceptable,” but that’s not even the real issue. The actual problem was that I accidentally shipped the package to the billing address instead of the shipping address. The customer and I already resolved this—she went back to her old apartment, picked up the package, and even told me it was worth the trip. I have proof of delivery and DMs where she confirms she got the bag and was happy with it. I even refunded her $30 for any inconvenience this situation has caused.

But here’s where it gets shady. After I reached out about the chargeback, she deleted the messages where she said she received it and then blocked me. She also told me she would contact her bank when I first asked about the dispute.

This is the message I’m sending to fight back the dispute: (I’m also attaching the proof of delevery and screenshots of all these messages, included the ones she deleted.)

‘’The customer received the product in perfect condition and acknowledged this in writing. On February 18, 2025, she stated, “I got it” and “I have the bag with me.” She later confirmed, “That’s fine, I appreciate it – it was far from my house but so worth it.”

These messages prove that she received and was satisfied with the purchase. Before completing the order, I also provided 14 detailed photos of the bag, ensuring full transparency about its condition. She reviewed the images and explicitly confirmed she wanted the item. There was never a complaint about the condition of the product before or after delivery.

When I reached out after receiving the chargeback notice, she initially admitted that it must have been a mistake and told me she would speak with her bank. However, instead of following through, she deleted her messages confirming receipt, ignored all follow-ups, and then blocked me on social media.

This chargeback is fraudulent. The customer made an informed purchase, received the product in good condition, confirmed she was happy with it, and is now attempting to keep both the item and the refund. Given the clear proof of delivery and her written acknowledgment, I request that this chargeback be reversed immediately ‘’

I’ve been really struggling with my business and this was my last straw of the week.

Two weeks ago I launched an app via a post to reddit. The reception was absolutely beyond my expectations.

I was sitting at my PhD student desk working when to my amazement, I saw a notification from stripe saying that I received my first payment of $7.5. I have never had such a flood of good hormones go through my body. Thank you whoever you are for clicking that purchase button and thank you to the continued interest of people that keep purchasing the app (It's now at $1000).

This is my 3rd attempt at a startup in the last 3 years and is the first time I have ever received an internet dollar. I spent 2 years on my last project - building tests for this, tweaking styling for that, optimising page load times and what did that get me? $0

What changed is I decided to make something useful, not revolutionary. Something that people search for regularly (you can find this out on sites like ahrefs), something I do regularly and something that I could build and test in a month. I thought: don’t focus on features no one will use until you’ve tested whether there’s interest in the essential features that solve the problem. If no one showed interest, i would move onto the next idea.

I settled on a universal file converter that does conversions locally on your device. There are plenty of file conversion sites, but when you use them, you’re sending your files and data to their servers. I didn’t like that and I wanted to use local tools but with a drag and drop app, so non-programmers could use it.

With my last failure, I honestly thought that maybe I wasn’t cut out for making my own apps/websites. However, this new mindset is working - build it fast and see whether people buy before you spend years on it. I hope this post is a bit of inspiration for people who are in a similar boat to how I was feeling. After your first failure, learn then build and launch to test your next idea. The feeling of having one actually be wanted by a user is the best feeling I have had in years.

Just got laid off from my designer role. Just going to be super transparent: I need some form of income in the next 30 days before I run out of paycheck.

What would your game plan be if you were in my shoes?

I've already filed for unemployment, redid my resume, and am working on updating my portfolio. Going to to reach out to every contact I have and see if they have any contract, freelance, or full time roles available. Then just mass apply for jobs.

I personally love Frizerly! It is a great tool that can automatically crawl and learn your business/products to auto publish weekly seo blogs using deekseek models hosted in US.

So curious, in your opinion, what are some truly AI first AI first tools? These days every tool or service I checkout, they all claim they have AI or is powered by AI. However most of these are old services or tools with a small AI add one, which usually makes things worse.

This isn’t one of those motivational stories you find all over the internet. It’s not the story of how I made $100K or built a million-dollar startup. In fact, many wouldn’t even call it a “success story.” So, if that’s what you’re looking for, you can go ahead and close this page. This is just the story of an ordinary guy who got tired of daydreaming and finally started doing something.

The illusion they sell us

Growing up in a society like ours, I found myself stuck with certain beliefs, like a sweaty shirt under the sun. One of them? That success is reserved for a select few. Only they can afford the mansion, the luxury cars, the life everyone dreams of. And yet, on the surface, everyone tells you, “You can make it too,” that everything is within your reach But then, when you actually try, the same people look at you weird and say: “What are you doing? This isn’t for you. Leave it to others. You’re not good enough.”

The big trap

For years, I fell for it. They made me believe that just dreaming was enough for things to come true. And at the same time, they made me believe that I wasn’t “meant” to be one of the people who make it. And if you’re wondering: “How the hell did you live with those two completely opposite ideas in your head?” Well, simple. I dreamed. I dreamed while sitting in class at university, while playing guitar, while sleeping. I dreamed of creating, building, launching something of my own. But in the end? I never did anything. I wasted days, one after another, without even taking the first step.

The slap that woke me up

Then, last year, the worst thing I could imagine happened (I’ve talked about it somewhere else before). It was like getting hit by a pro wrestler. I woke up instantly. And I told myself: “What the hell are you doing with your life?”

I had to choose:

• Take the messy, obstacle-filled road that maybe would lead me to my dreams.
• Or accept the belief that only a few make it, and that I wasn’t one of them.

It wasn’t an obvious choice. And maybe many would say these two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but in my life, I’ve always seen things as either black or white (maybe I’m wrong about that too, but time will tell).In the end, the decision wasn’t so obvious, but if I’m here writing this, I guess you can imagine which path I chose.

Where do I start?

I had spent years fantasizing about what I could build. But when it came to actually doing something, I had no idea where to start. Then, a thought started pushing through my doubts: “What if I create something useful, something that makes life easier for me, my friends, and anyone who wants to use it?”. And so I spent an entire year learning, learning, and learning again. I started from the basics, even though, being in university, I already knew many concepts well, I created a lot but showed very little.

And finally, yesterday…

This year, I set a goal for myself: stop hiding and bring to light what I’ve built. And so, yesterday, I finally launched my first app: postonreddit.

There’s still a lot to improve, bugs to fix, things to figure out. But this time, instead of spending my days just dreaming, I turned one of those dreams into reality. And even if this is just the beginning of something big, or maybe nothing at all…I can say that I’ve achieved my own little success.

I just wanted to pass along a tremendous book I read that I really loved and changed my perspective and strategy is “Burn The Boats” by Matt Higgins.

He’s a VC guy and was a guest Shark on Shark Tank before.

If you’re just starting out like me, this book has finally moved me to action because pretty much all of the endless unanswered questions/dilemmas I would think up that kept me forever stuck were finally dealt with.

Main points for me:

1.) no cofounders

2.) build something that you feel like God called you on to create

3.) guide your decisions through intuition over data

There are so many great gems and insights like how to gracefully manage the different personality types that work for your startup, etc. It’s half inspiring and half tactical strategy that you will feel so equipped to start your company.

I’m currently building my first startup and these are the 3 top books I’m following in sequential order to achieve my goals.

My top 3 current favorite books:

1.) Almanak of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

2.) Burn The Boats by Matt Higgins

3.) Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk

Made my first sale yesterday, I couldn’t believe it that someone paid for something I made with my own two hands.

Getting an idea from your mind, validating and implementing it is spiritual in my opinion I don’t care what anybody says.

All I can say is I am glad I never gave up keep pushing.