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by ZiadHilal 4705 days ago
I am a passive income hacker, here are my thoughts:

Studied CS at university for 2 years, dropped out to pursue an idea. After a couple years of work, I was bringing in 20k a month.

It was the most incredible time of my life. It lasted for 7 years before it hit the bottom. During that time I spent my days playing beach volleyball, tennis, golf, skateboarding, gaming, girls, beautiful car/apartment, the life in Santa Monica CA!

I wasn't the least bit afraid when the project/business started slowing down. I decided to launch two more ideas - BOTH FAILED. At that point I was burnt out and was running low on savings. I had no other choice but find employment. In my mind, I failed and lost everything. It hurt me for years, and still hurts me to this day.

While I have a great job, the feeling of imprisonment and failure is always with me. Eventually I got the strength to work on another idea during weekends and late nights. That gives you very little time, especially when you have a demanding job. It took over the course of a year to launch this new idea and it's not working out the way I hoped it would.

Call it what you want, but in my mind that's three failures in a row.

I've learned that luck and timing are definitely part of the equation. I've learned that you can spend year after year obsessed with coding your ideas and end up with only the knowledge.

It's extremely tough and taxing to go down this route. Be prepared to fail multiple times. Be prepared to lose every cent of your savings.

I know I'll continue trying, hopefully one day I'll come back on top again :)

2 comments

OP here. Awesome story - thanks for sharing. I really hope you get back to where you were. Best of luck.
May I know what's the idea that made you "retire early"? Have you ever thought, "Should have put the money into saving, should have seen it coming"?
I created a CMS that did user integration with message boards, there were few to none at the time.

I made many mistakes, the biggest ones were:

1) Having hit a relatively high success at 21, I felt indestructible. I had no fear of spending most of my income on entertainment. I knew nothing about budgeting, I should have saved.

2) Towards the end, I definitely spent too much time having fun and ignoring the product. When you're on a high roll for so many years, you feel invincible.

The decline started gradually, but in my mind I always believed I could easily bring everything back on top. At the end, I repeatedly did everything in my power to save the product but it was too late.