Anki ✨

My last time bootstrapping a startup was a failure. I lost my life savings ($100k+), let my marriage decay to the point of divorce, and suffered a burnout that destroyed my health. It took me months of rest, meditation, and therapy to get back on my feet. I was too broken to continue chasing my startup dreams during this time. I had to rebuild the life foundations needed for dreaming first. So I took a job for 8 months, moved to a new place, and made more real-life friends to get some stability. Today, my health is back at 80%, I grieved the end of my marriage, and rebuilt some savings. I’m happy in my new life and feel ready to build startups again. But I’m also scared. The reality of building a startup Having been through entrepreneurship hell, I know it’s 10x harder than the success stories shown in the media. I know that no matter how many people validate my idea, and how polished my product is... success is never fully in my control. Building a startup is like placing a bet. I can win (rarely) or I can lose (often). And the game never stops until I sell the company or quit. Even with product-market-fit and revenue growth, it can collapse at anytime: - changes in social or SEO algorithms can reduce traffic by 90% and kill growth - platforms I depend on to build my app (payment, APIs) can change their pricing model or decide to ban me for no valid reason - OpenAI can launch a new feature that makes my product obsolete Being a startup founder is like being the captain of a ship in a never-ending storm. It requires constant attention to avoid hitting the rocks and not sink. And after what I’ve been through last time, I don’t want to endure this hell again. The reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur was to get more freedom and joy out of life, not less! So I’ll be doing things differently. Focus on financial freedom Once I leave my job next week, I’ll be getting French unemployment benefits to cover living expenses for 7 months. I also have $20k in an emergency fund in case anything bad happens. I won’t put all my hopes of financial freedom into a crazy startup idea again. Instead, I’m going for the most efficient way to get revenue without selling my time. While building my last startup, I built up some assets: - a social following of 85K people - a podcast with ~750 listeners per episode - a twitter course that still sells $500/mo Since I wasn’t focused on financial freedom, only obsessed about growing my startup, I missed on obvious revenue generating opportunities. But now I see things clearly. I will: - Write a short ebook about my failures and lessons learned, and sell it to founders who follow me - Accept paid sponsors on my podcast - Update my twitter course to bring it back to $2-3k per month (like before the X rebrand) - Offer $1000/hour consulting calls on social media strategy With these 4 small bets, I think I can reach $6k per month, mostly on auto-pilot. This is enough to cover taxes, living expenses and emergencies, and give me the time and financial freedom I’m looking for. Being a content creator isn’t as sexy as a startup founder, but it looks like the right next step for me. Once I get there, I’ll be in a better position to take the risk of building startups again. So that’s the plan! Oh, and I’ll be documenting the whole journey in a newsletter. Every week, I’ll shoot an email with: - a deep lesson I learned about entrepreneurship - my best meme of the week - updates on my journey If you’re interested, you can signup in the tweet below. Let’s get this party started again! 🔥 Love you all 💙