3 ms·
Note: I am not an engineer. I’m mostly skilled in telling stories. I got fired from every job I ever had before I started working for myself. Each time I left
by josh2600 5y ago
Note: I am not an engineer. I’m mostly skilled in telling stories.
I got fired from every job I ever had before I started working for myself. Each time I left I ended up in a better job until the last time when I got laid off from a telecom PM role. I went to look for another job and never found one. At the time I was living paycheck to paycheck (barely) so this was quite scary. I did have a small severance but that was it.
I decided to make a startup and begged my friends for enough money to get going (secretparty.io). It started to grow. At the same time, one of my dear friends told me to put all of my severance into ethereum. It helped that he said he’d give me the money back if I lost it, he just wanted me to see what was going to happen.
My severance 10x’d in a month. I stopped working on the startup and begged my friends for money to start a crypto hedge fund. That was crypto lotus and ended up being one of the first serious crypto funds.
While being at crypto lotus, I grew frustrated that no one was making a consumer-friendly crypto project. That’s when I started working on mobilecoin.
Now mobilecoin is worth over a billion dollars in equity and several billion in coins.
All I can say is that I never would’ve gotten any of this without an insane amount of luck. It all could’ve very easily have gone another way and I might be homeless right now. Life is a series of dice rolls. You’re lucky if you can avoid getting snake eyes every now and again.
If I had it to do all over again, I would’ve started working for myself much sooner despite all of the risk.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoWhat do you define as living 'paycheck to paycheck'? What kind of friends do you have that have loanable startup money? I think you and I come from totally different classes in life.
- DrammBA 5y agoI was thinking the same thing. Begging my friends for money would land me a couple hundred dollars, maybe a thousand if I cry enough, and I definitely don't have any friends that would let me gamble money on crypto and pay me back if I lose it. It's interesting seeing the stark difference in safety nets.
- kwere 5y agowait, you can get money from friends?
- josh2600 5y agoI was about one paycheck away from missing a payment on my parents mortgage. The friends I begged were people I had causally met at burning man. I grew up very poor, like don’t know where your next meal is gonna come from poor. I networked into the tech community by working day in and day out to be something the tech community wanted. That meant changing who I was in deep and fundamental ways. I grew up in the Bay Area but all of my friends were in the hood when I was a kid. I also dropped out of college. At a certain point I just started paying more attention to who had money and power. Your mileage may vary. As I said I got very lucky.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoCongrats to you! Luck is where preparation meets opportunity, so some part of it is deff due to your work and plans. My friends and I split the bill on a 30$ meal! They deff don't have startup money. The juxtaposition just threw me.
- Chris2048 5y ago> he said he’d give me the money back if I lost it, he just wanted me to see what was going to happen Uh, so why didn't he just buy the ETH?
- VRay 5y agoMy guess is his friend had a 6-7 figure net worth and loaned him a 3 figure sum, otherwise this doesn't make any sense to me
- canaus 5y agoThis entire comment reads odd. The begging. The purchasing ETH with severance. The multiple advertisements. I'm glad it worked out for you, but this is a 1% of 1% tier of luck (especially situationally).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- josh2600 5y agoI 100% agree. My point was that often in life a lot of success that we attribute to skill is luck. I got insanely lucky more times than I can count. A few coin flips in the other direction and I’d be homeless.
- gaws 5y ago> I got fired from every job I ever had before I started working for myself. Why?
- kwere 5y agofor DD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuagoldbard/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuagoldbard/