12 Ideas, 1 year: Going from $250K to $5M (Progress Thread)

[Edmont0x]

Hey, aspiring entrepreneurs,
I want to take you with me on my journey from my current liquid net worth of €250K to €5M.
My DNA is entrepreneurship, it has been the one thing I have done since I was 18 besides studying Business Administration.

• Started my first company, which did get some product market fit (10K revenue per month) but not really took off because we f*cked up too many things.
• Joined a start-up company early on, which we then proceeded to sell to a private equity company for €10M. Got a nice bonus, but I have not really made the big bugs yet.
• Now completed my MBA this year, and I wanted some time to reflect, the money was there and I wanted to build a network that I can use in the future.
• I did use the time at the MBA to teach myself how to code. Not sure this will pay off, but I was motivated and I deemed it's always better to be able to build your own product rather than to spend money paying someone else.

My huge problem in the past has been to just jump head first into an idea, build the product/spend the money only to see my idea pan out into nothing. That's why I want to shift gears this year. My target is €5M and I have 2 main streams of how I want to get there.

• Start-up company
• Investing: Mostly Crypto but also Stocks ($100K - $150K of my stack)

But instead of how I did it in the past, I want to go validation first. I have 12 ideas in my head that I like. So I want to:

• Validate Problem first => Is this a real problem, who is the audience, market sizing, etc. => I want to spend more time doing initial research and user interviews validating a problem before going to the next step
• Validate Solution => Build an MVP, landing page, etc. to test if my solution is working for the problem that I validated existed.
• If nothing works out => move on
• If however see some sort of traction => double down and try to grow

Most importantly, instead of just building, I want to go into the area I was trying to avoid most (like many entrepreneurs): getting in touch with the customer. That means actually putting landing pages on, booking ads to test traction, getting into the communities, writing cold emails, scheduling user interviews.

Why this thread?
I want to share my thoughts, my ideas and my process, hoping to get into great discussions about how to build a startup in the early stages.
Also, I do hope it helps me to pace myself and reflect on my progress.

Cheers and looking forward to your thoughts

 

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[Roperegrine]

any tips for 17 year old young man behind a screen, tell me your wisedom?

 

[Trismigistus]

Hey, aspiring entrepreneurs,
I want to take you with me on my journey from my current liquid net worth of €250K to €5M.
My DNA is entrepreneurship, it has been the one thing I have done since I was 18 besides studying Business Administration.

• Started my first company, which did get some product market fit (10K revenue per month) but not really took off because we f*cked up too many things.
• Joined a start-up company early on, which we then proceeded to sell to a private equity company for €10M. Got a nice bonus, but I have not really made the big bugs yet.
• Now completed my MBA this year, and I wanted some time to reflect, the money was there and I wanted to build a network that I can use in the future.
• I did use the time at the MBA to teach myself how to code. Not sure this will pay off, but I was motivated and I deemed it's always better to be able to build your own product rather than to spend money paying someone else.

My huge problem in the past has been to just jump head first into an idea, build the product/spend the money only to see my idea pan out into nothing. That's why I want to shift gears this year. My target is €5M and I have 2 main streams of how I want to get there.

• Start-up company
• Investing: Mostly Crypto but also Stocks ($100K - $150K of my stack)

But instead of how I did it in the past, I want to go validation first. I have 12 ideas in my head that I like. So I want to:

• Validate Problem first => Is this a real problem, who is the audience, market sizing, etc. => I want to spend more time doing initial research and user interviews validating a problem before going to the next step
• Validate Solution => Build an MVP, landing page, etc. to test if my solution is working for the problem that I validated existed.
• If nothing works out => move on
• If however see some sort of traction => double down and try to grow

Most importantly, instead of just building, I want to go into the area I was trying to avoid most (like many entrepreneurs): getting in touch with the customer. That means actually putting landing pages on, booking ads to test traction, getting into the communities, writing cold emails, scheduling user interviews.

Why this thread?
I want to share my thoughts, my ideas and my process, hoping to get into great discussions about how to build a startup in the early stages.
Also, I do hope it helps me to pace myself and reflect on my progress.

Cheers and looking forward to your thoughts

Great post, thanks for the lessons learned!