> Could you name some (not commonly known ways to get fuck you money)?
To clarify, I put “fuck you money” at about $10m-$20m. This amount enables a relatively comfortable life in perpetuity without touching the principal.
The ways are all commonly known, but they aren’t commonly followed.
tl;dr — it’s boring.
As a tech person:
1. Learn sales.
2. Learn business operations.
3. Solve business problems, possibly using tech.
A great way to scale into this is starting an agency. The agency can do programming, web development, ad tech… anything that direction.
It’s cash as you go, you get to learn while getting paid, you get a front row seat to business problems, and you can make useful contacts.
Once you have enough cash / cash flow, you can buy or joint venture with companies that have good product-market fit but weak operations, and you provide the part that they are weak at.
These businesses are everywhere at price points in the $10k to ~$500m range (at around $500m, the big boys start getting interested).
Many of the operational failures are in sales/marketing (all aspects thereof like pricing, channels, etc.), organization structure (too many bodies), misaligned incentives, etc.
Some of the easiest changes I’ve personally made is pricing changes. Specifically, changing a large irregular one-off payment to a much lower recurring payment (one that is preferred by the customers), and adding three-tier pricing with appropriate value add at each level. Imho, these decisions were not made by the original owners because either they were afraid of change or they didn’t talk to and listen to their customers (or both).
To clarify, I put “fuck you money” at about $10m-$20m. This amount enables a relatively comfortable life in perpetuity without touching the principal.
The ways are all commonly known, but they aren’t commonly followed.
tl;dr — it’s boring.
As a tech person:
1. Learn sales.
2. Learn business operations.
3. Solve business problems, possibly using tech.
A great way to scale into this is starting an agency. The agency can do programming, web development, ad tech… anything that direction.
It’s cash as you go, you get to learn while getting paid, you get a front row seat to business problems, and you can make useful contacts.
Once you have enough cash / cash flow, you can buy or joint venture with companies that have good product-market fit but weak operations, and you provide the part that they are weak at.
These businesses are everywhere at price points in the $10k to ~$500m range (at around $500m, the big boys start getting interested).
Many of the operational failures are in sales/marketing (all aspects thereof like pricing, channels, etc.), organization structure (too many bodies), misaligned incentives, etc.
Some of the easiest changes I’ve personally made is pricing changes. Specifically, changing a large irregular one-off payment to a much lower recurring payment (one that is preferred by the customers), and adding three-tier pricing with appropriate value add at each level. Imho, these decisions were not made by the original owners because either they were afraid of change or they didn’t talk to and listen to their customers (or both).
This lets you develop a cash cow.
Hold your cash cow.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Boring, right?