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.