Speedrunning financial freedom - My plan to make $25M in 3 years

Welcome

I'd like to start by making one thing clear. I don't know shit

Very little bothers me more than people people on the internet who haven't done shit, yet pretend to know shit, so they can sell you their shit.

It's for that reason, that I'd like to let you know upfront: I haven't done shit. I don't know shit. I don't want to sell you shit.

Now, let's talk about rapid wealth creation.

(Almost)Everyone wants to be wealthy. And anyone who wants to be wealthy would likely prefer to be wealthy now than 10 years from now. This is exactly why gurus have successfully fleeced people out of their hard-earned dollars with get-rich-quick schemes since the dawn of the internet. It's for this reason that content relating to rapid wealth creation rightfully attracts a measure of doubt from anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

That said, It's clearly very possible to amass a large fortune in the span of half a decade or less; even if buying your favorite guru's new course is unlikely to help you do so.

A few examples that come to mind:

• Reio Suun, Raul Kaevand, and Nils Schneider have added a combined 100M+ to their net worths by scaling Instantly.ai from 0 to 12M+ ARR in less than 2 years
• Nathan Barry scaled Convertkit from 5k MRR to 2M MRR within 5 years of going all in on the business (the company is now likely worth north of 200M)
• Sabba Keynejad and Timur Mamedov built veed.io veed.io to $7M ARR in 5 years, tacking on sweet sweet $40M+ to their combined net worths. ^examples

You may have noticed that in all of these examples, the wealth was generated through equity in self-funded SaaS(Software as a service) companies. The SaaS aspect isn't terribly relevant here, this is mostly a result of my own interests. The self-funded component isn't notable either; It's just much easier to speculate on the personal wealth of founders when you don't have to consider the complexity introduced by convoluted cap tables. The relevant common denominator, however, is the creation of wealth via equity ownership in a rapidly expanding company. This underlines a fundamental truth about wealth creation Owning equity in a fast-growing business is the most effective way to build wealth.

There are 2 potential routes to obtain said equity. You can buy it with $ by investing in public companies or startups(if you are already wealthy enough to be accredited that is). Or you can buy it with time by starting a company or joining a startup that offers stock as compensation.

Purchasing equity is a great way to compound your money once you're already wealthy. But it is unlikely to make you wealthy in the first place. That leaves us with option 2. Sweat equity.

Joining an early-stage, high-growth startup is a tempting choice for those who are eager to balance risk and reward. You can find more on this concept on this episode of MFM about Sarah's List, but it's not a path I'm drawn to. Why? For someone in my (highly privileged) position—U.S. citizen, college-educated, from an upper-middle-class family—The personal downside is practically nonexistent, making my Expected Value (EV) calculation straightforward.

Building a company is the unequivocal best choice for me.

This obviously isn't some grand conclusion I came to while I sit here writing this. A year and a half ago, I embraced this truth when I quit my 9-5 to move to Argentina and start an online business. The journey that began then has led to a more recent, and perhaps more profound realization: my ambition is to start a business with the explicit aim of generating as much wealth as possible, as fast as possible. More on that in a second.

Anyone who has taken a basic economics class understands the time value of money. A dollar in your pocket today is more valuable than one earned tomorrow. It would be quite easy to launch into a long-winded explanation of the wonders of compounding interest. But I think what is more relevant is why I think it's useful to obtain a large amount of capital in the first place.

Most of the world spends the majority of their waking hours at work source. Some love their jobs, But I think at the end of the day, if you gave most people the freedom to choose to do whatever they wanted when they woke up each morning; few would choose to return to sitting in front of a screen every day. But what would they do instead? I don’t think it matters much; the point is that most people spend 5 days a week(or more) doing something that they would likely choose to do less if they had more optionality.

I don't even know what I would want to do every day if I didn't have to work. But I do know that I want to be able to commit unlimited time and energy to whatever excites me on any given day. So the question becomes: How can I spend the most time possible with the freedom to choose what I want to do? Or in other words: how can I maximize optionality?

At its core, this is an optimization problem. There are quite a few variables that contribute to total optionality: wealth, time, intelligence, health, status, etc... But I would argue that wealth is The 80-20 of optionality, in other words, it's possible to achieve ~80% of total optionality potential solely by maximizing wealth.

I'm not sure if I need to explain why maximum optionality is desirable, Arguing against the idea that people want optionality is the same as arguing that people don't want to do what they want to do(not to be confused with What they (want to) Want).

My hypothesis is that the quickest path to maximizing lifetime optionality is to focus intensely on building wealth, allowing me to achieve 80% of my optionality potential in the shortest time possible. Or in other words to attempt a Financial Freedom Speed Run(FFSR).

Financial Freedom Speed Run (FFSR)
A systematic and ruthless approach to rapid wealth creation, wherein an individual strives to reach their net worth target in the minimum feasible time.

Ok, at this point you should understand that I want to get rich as fuck as fast as possible, and why I want to do so(aside from the obvious).

Specifically, my goal is to Reach my FFN(Financial Freedom Number), 22.5M Net worth in the next 3 years(starting Monday, August 14, 2023)

But what's the fucking plan?

Breaking down my goal financially makes it sound somewhat absurd(maybe it just is absurd). I need to add an average of $20,547.94 to my net worth per day, for the next 1095 days to reach it.

I don't think it's realistic to expect to earn 20k for the next 1,000 days straight. But I do think it's possible to build a company worth 25M+ in that time.

That's why my plan is to Start, Scale, and Sell one or more SaaS companies as fast as possible. I didn't conduct some rigorous exploration of "the optimal business" to decide that I should start a SaaS. There are plenty of business models that lend themselves to rapid growth. SaaS just happens to be the best suited to my strengths and preferences.

If I break things down in terms of the SaaS I would need to build and sell the goal starts to sound(somewhat) more realistic.

Assuming I can minimize my tax obligation I need to build and sell a business worth ~$27,000,000.

SaaS companies are currently selling for ~6x ARR. So my company or portfolio of companies would need to have reach $4.5M Annual Recurring Revenue(ARR): 27M/6 = 4.5M ARR
or
$375,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue(MRR)
or
500 customers w/ (ARP)U of $750/mo

In this hypothetical, I would "only" need to add an average of 14 customers per month for the next 3 years. The unit economics of my current SaaS, Drippi.ai aren't quite this good - we're closer to a $115 ARPU. But that's still "only" 3,260 customers 🙃.

This brings me back to my example list of fast-growing SaaS companies. It's clearly possible to build and scale a SaaS at a rate that will allow me to achieve my goal. So the obvious course of action is to study the systems, habits, and strategies of these companies and just try to emulate their success. Nathan Barry from ConvertKit has a blog documenting every step he has taken since starting ConvertKit in 2013. He even went as far as publicizing all of their financials and metrics. Resources like this should make it incredibly easy to learn about the habits of other successful founders and the business practices that helped them succeed. That's why a key element of my speed run attempt will be continuous learning and research.

As I learn I will attempt to distill the learnings into a set of protocols that will provide the speed run attempt with structure. I’m also hoping these protocols will be somewhat useful to anyone who wants to attempt a FFSR of their own.

This site/page/blog/newsletter will serve as a dynamic hub for collecting and sharing my thoughts, progress, core philosophies, ideas, and protocols related to FFSR

In embracing the FFSR philosophy, I am consciously choosing to make a sacrifice. I am willingly trading a few intense years of my life, committing to a relentless pursuit of rapid wealth creation, to grant myself a lifetime of maximum optionality. This is clearly a risk, and while the risk may have an incredible asymmetric upside from my perspective, I am risking an asset that is truly nonrenewable. It's for this reason that I have decided to cap the downside by placing a stop-loss at 3 years. If the goal is not met within this period, I will shift towards a healthier work-life balance and maybe even re-read the 4-hour workweek. This boundary ensures that the pursuit of maximal optionality doesn’t compromise the very freedom I hope to achieve.

Anyways, The clock is already ticking. I'm headed back to work.

If you want to receive occasional updates from me about my progress, breakdowns of the protocols I'm building, and some other occasional thoughts on wealth creation drop a sub to my newsletter.

You can also see my current progress($703k/$25M) and a hub for all of my FFSR content at FFSR.xyz