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89 Comments

If I gave you $20.000, what would you do with it?

You can rephrase the question to "If you had $20.000 sitting in your bank account, what would you do with it?". Whatever you can relate to more.

There is also a Twitter version of this, feel free to cross-post.

  1. 6

    Roll in bed with it and start throwing it up at the air

    :P

    1. 2

      I was more thinking about putting that in a big safe the size of a building and swimming in it. 🤑🤑🤑

    2. 1

      I laughed so hard I dunno why

  2. 4

    Business use:

    $500 to cover essential subscriptions (Creative Cloud, Webflow, Linkedin Premium)
    $1k to buy a more powerful computer and important working utensils
    $2k to build a perfect website
    $7k to work with an agency that develops the app professionally
    $9.4k into marketing (digital & analogue ads as well as business travels)

    Personal use:

    $5 for a big bowl of spaghetti ice cream :-)

    @mxmzb what would you do with the money?

    1. 2

      Probably something like that:

      • 5k I would invest in stocks
      • 5k I would invest in crypto
      • 5k I would keep for emergency
      • 5k I would try to find a mentor that will be willing to coach me. But not one of those Facebook advertisement mentors or something, a legitimate person that maybe doesn't even offer mentoring, and is busy with real-life stuff and not actually mentoring as a service. Then I would travel there and spend the last 5k on living costs to be physically near to the mentor
      1. 1

        What would you like mentoring in?

        1. 1

          Doesn't matter too much. Obviously, something entrepreneurial (otherwise, how do you know the person knows shit?), but the niche itself is secondary.

          1. 2

            I know a lot about email marketing. Also, how to live life well.

            1. 1

              Are you offering a mentorship here? :D

  3. 3

    Love this question! To answer this, first, I'm from Taiwan. Just give u a lil bit context.

    Assume it's USD, To turn $20,000 USD into NTD (New Taiwan dollar) would be around like $600,000 NTD

    I would split it into 3 parts:
    -First 1/3, I would save it as my emergency fund.

    -Second 1/3, I would bring my dad to go to eat whatever restaurants he wants for like 20,000 NTD on the holidays and pay the following 10 months rents in advance.

    -The rest 1/3, I could start any side hustle I want without worrying about have no savings and any money issues (worrying no cash flow) to make wrong decisions.

    I would start by making website for businesses and keep blogging the topic about entrepreneurship and get interviews with startup founders/ entrepreneurs mostly based in Taiwan but also welcoming hackers, builders, entrepreneurs here to join us and inspiring then showing what's possible nowadays for people who want to start something on their own.

    1. 2

      I love the part about your dad, very inspiring!

      You know, you can sell websites to businesses without capital though!

    1. 1

      What would he have to sell for you?

      1. 1

        He finds new clients for my service. That in turn creates a cash flow.

        1. 2

          I believe the founder should be the best salesman of his own business (doesn't mean he needs to actively sell the whole time though).

          1. 1

            Most technical founders struggle selling their products. It is a different skill altogether.

            1. 2

              Sure, but it sounds like a skill you should learn either way instead of outsourcing it.

  4. 2

    That is a good question. For my current project Open Lowcode, what I am lacking is capacity to do enterprise sales. I am not sure how to spend $20K, which is, in the professional world, not a lot of money.

    I am ruling out:

    • advertising (not sure it is of any help in the enterprise software domain)
    • hiring someone ($20K may cover 2 to 4 months of salary, typically not enough to do the first sales)

    What I may do:

    • participate to professional conventions (I understand it could lead to useful leads)
    • Hire some professional people to review the sales material, perform neat design of the sales material.

    I would really appreciate answers from people with experience in enterprise sales.

    1. 1

      Don't look at enterprise sales as if you have to approach unapproachable companies. It's still people who you need to find and talk to. You can find them just as you would for any other niche. They too hang out on LinkedIn, Twitter, maybe even IndieHackers. They too use email and Slack. Start searching, and you will find them!

  5. 2

    Ads, ads and more ads

    1. 1

      Business as usual :D

  6. 2

    Cryptocurrency, most likely. Nothing related to indie hacking until I have a validated idea. Once I have that then maybe on the idea.

  7. 2

    Add some contribution to loan of my new house.

  8. 2

    I would spend some amount of it to make Farm My Yard signs in Portland, Oregon and then give them away to people who wanted to try out my idea - http://farmmyyard.org - I'd give back the rest.

    1. 1

      Decentralized and social farming, this has to be the greatest thing I've heard about for quite some time! Love your project! How long have you been doing this already and do you have some success stories already?

      1. 2

        Hey @mxmzb - I think I got this up and running in 2013. I have an email list of supporters (probably mostly in PNW), groups that have copied the idea in Australia and the UK and many people in the US who have taken the idea and run with it. I hear from people all the time who are wanting me to match them with someone :) But the idea is really about neighbors meeting to farm one another's yards. The signs are key. I know an app would also do more to help move things along, but I think 100 lawn signs up all around my neighborhood would really set this in motion in a big way.

        Let me know if you have any further questions and I'm tickled that you like the idea - thank you. Sign up for updates @ http://farmmyyard.org and I'll keep you in the loop.

        [email protected]

        1. 1

          No more questions, but I subscribed for now. Curious if this is going to snowball at some point. I really, really want to see you succeed with this cool project!

          1. 1

            As soon as it does much of the world's food issue lessens in severity. It would be so good on so many levels - and for now, people can just support whatever urban gardening is happening around them. Grow food!

  9. 2

    Buy Bitcoin than quit my job in 3 months to go full time on my robotics company.

    1. 1

      Why in 3 months?

      1. 2

        BTC price would probably be up and by then I would have a validated prototype

        1. 2

          TBH I probably wouldn't wait 3 months, Just long enough to be confident enough the idea is validated as its a really hard physics problem and if the current path doesn't work the fallback is also a really hard motion planning problem.

  10. 2

    I Will try to make $22K with it in a month, so I can take out 2K and cycle that $20K back in to generate $2K a month. A consistent MRR for myself to survive.

    1. 1

      Lol. How would you use those 20k to add another 2k to them? And why not 3k or 1k?

  11. 2

    I would hire a frontend dev to make a sweet console for my upcoming cloud platform so I can focus on the backend and infra work. Also marketing & sales, yes, let's never forget that!

  12. 2

    Nothing.
    I prefer to think of money as money = time.
    So $20k would allow me to spend about 1 more year working on whatever I want and take my time to create cool stuff.

  13. 2

    Buy Bitcoin + Ethereum & HODL!

  14. 2

    Pay some medical students in the Philippines to help generate content for our medical reference database: https://www.grepmed.com

    1. 1

      Terrific project! 👍

  15. 2

    I'd put half towards the full cost of my brother's medical bill (Cancer is emotionally, physically and financially draining guys).

    Then I'd use the other 10K towards; building a website, subscriptions (hosting, domains, marketing agency, courses), outsource admin, purchasing a better computer and a quality internet connection.

    The remaining I would keep as cash flow (most likely around 6K of it). Fortunately with this investment, a good strategy in place and a lot of hard work I'd be looking to gain a minimum 3X ROI :)

    1. 2

      Sorry to hear, I hope your brother wins the fight!

      Love your spirit!

      1. 2

        We hope so too man! Thanks a million :)

  16. 2

    Go on holiday for a year

  17. 2

    Guess what? it isn't easy as others make it look. I'm just 19 and I remember how serious I was last year that I needed just around $400(a lot in Africa) to start something. Fortunately I got a remote job and also I earn some money through a fiverr GIG. I now have way more than $400 just sitting in my account. I don't even know what happened to me.

    1. 1

      That's inspiring! Glad you made it!

    2. 1

      That's some great news that remote working allowed you to make up the money you needed to get something done! Which African country are you from btw?

        1. 1

          Nice! Hey from a fellow African :) Keep on hustlin'

  18. 2

    Lol I'll give a serious answer. I'd use it to blitz-scale my validation processes. FB ads, Google Ads, hell even Reddit ads to validate and make my potential customer demographics come to me instead of me going to them. Maybe Linkedin Recruiter too.

    Second thing I'd do is I would use it to network, both with my customers and with other people I want to talk to. Hard to turn down a cold email where I'm offering to pay for your lunch. If we weren't in covid, I'd fly out to meet them in person.

    I might even mess around and buy a SaaS instead of making one myself, saves me some time in the short term.

    1. 1

      If that's not cold-blooded, I don't know. Love it!

      1. 2

        I'll take that as a compliment 🙏

  19. 2

    I would spent it over a bigger period of time on propagation. The only thing that stops us from growing is that the word doesn't spread that fast.

    1. 1

      What's the product?

      1. 2

        It's a work tool called OrgPad. You may find us at OrgPad.com

  20. 2

    I have a lot of money sitting in my bank account and I am trying to spend them slowly so I can work on our startup OrgPad without any stress of time or needing to find investors quickly. That is the advantage of working for Google before starting the startup ;). Of course, when I will see opportunity to speed the growth by investing some of the money into OrgPad, I will do it.

    1. 2

      Calm and long-term thinking, nice!

  21. 2

    I am a practical person. So give me money, I will keep you updated where I am investing / spending all this money.

  22. 2

    Improve and build features.

    1. 1

      So basically hire a developer?

  23. 2

    Use it as an insurance fund for sick and disabled for COVID-19, as I recently learnt that the insurers in my country are not providing coverage for those with preexisting illness.

    1. 1

      That's some major bullshit! But you're being very generous and positive!

      1. 0

        Yeah, but the mainstream media wouldn't even cover the ordeal of sick and disabled with these Insurers as almost all of them are funded by them and they are having a field day with COVID-19.

  24. 2

    To those giving "funny" or "silly" ideas: Are you saying, you don't need the money and doing the indie hacking thing for pure fun? Or are you saying you have no idea how to multiply it?

    1. 2

      If you consider "I put it on my bank account" silly, well, here's what I think.

      I want to build something which is useful for others. That's my main goal. I'm writing a book right now and, even if I could spend this money on ads, I don't want to. I want to test marketing and exposure strategies, see what works, without using money. I think if what I'm doing is useful and if I make friends and speak about it, slowly but surely, I'll grow an audience. Then, if they're interested in what I'm doing, they might buy stuff.

      It might sound silly, but it's the way I've chosen, and I want to stick with it. So thank you for your generous offer, I'll put that in my bank account and see if, when it's time, I can use it for something.

      1. 1

        I didn't judge anyone's approaches, bro. If that's what you would do, all power to you.

        All I wanted was that people answer the question seriously, cause I am sincerely interested. And some answers seemed rather like they were intended as a joke. So I asked if that's actually what they would do or not 🤷‍♂️

        1. 2

          No problem :) I just wanted to precise my thoughts.

  25. 2

    I'd invest it into hiring a Infrastructure Engineer to configure jemsplash.com on AWS as well as invest it into learning more about AWS myself to properly manage my startup. (I was quoted about $2,000 for this)

    I would say marketing, but, I have set a lot of micro goals towards my project.

    I'd hire a Virtual Assistant ($500-$1000) straight out for 3 months to see how helpful he/she would be as I build out jemsplash.com

    They could help with building my email sequences/follow ups, blog posting, community building, etc. (I know because I have one but only pay for a few hours a month for now)

    I'd with hold the other $10,000 for website support, SEO, Partnerships with Creators (Youtubers, Influencers, etc), host virtual events, and more to build the community around Jemsplash.

    Btw: Jemsplash is an alternative for Gumroad if you were wondering what it is.

    1. 2

      Hey!
      Where did you find a virtual assistant ? What service do you recommend ?
      Cheers

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    2. 1

      Nice! Do you have a vision for Jemsplash? Why would I choose Jemsplash over Gumroad?

  26. 2

    I would use it to run ads for my newsletter and get the subscriber number WAY up. I've already experimented with ads and the results were very good. Far better than any other side gig or actual startup I've done in the past.

    1. 2

      Since you like Art a Day - you might enjoy Song a Day :)

      http://tinyurl.com/song-a-daywithDJAlbert

      or, Dance a Day :)

      https://tinyurl.com/danceaday (which is more like Dance a week, but who's counting?)

    2. 2

      if possible, can you share the link of your newsletter

      1. 2

        I think it's https://randomdailyart.com/ ?

        @nomadsteve IMHO it would be cool if you would support the artists by including a link to their site, so your subscribers could even connect and buy it if they wanted.

        1. 2

          That's the site and that's the plan. :)

  27. 2

    invest in crypto :)

  28. 2

    I put it on my bank account.

  29. 2

    I will keep working on my projects. I run out of money and need to find a job, something I am really not good at :)

  30. 1

    Will get a billboard space to advertise my business

  31. 1

    Probably invest part of it. In candies

  32. 2

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 2

      Nice, sounds promising! What's your real-life alternative without me giving you $20k? :D

      1. 2

        This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

        1. 2

          This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

          1. 0

            No specific intentions. I'm just playing around with posts on IH in general and also was sincerely interested in the answers others would give since I was trying to come up with a good answer about this question.

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