Dug a little into your background, read some of your posts. Appreciate the different perspective with "Choose Money First." I think a piece of that will stick with me forever now, just because it hit a little different. So I guess just.. thanks for the thoughts.

Thank you! In person I'm a bag of laughs, but on text I really come off as aloof, so it feels good to read that someone was impacted by something I wrote.

I've got so much more that I'm afraid to publish. Might have to reconsider.

Your writing style is entertaining and inspiring.

i'd love to read more of your work so i say do it! if not, rhoades.lorenzo@gmail.com and i promise not to share them ;)

Write more. It's great. Have you seen Sam Simmons tv series Problems? You might like it. Its not related, just you might like it.

I really loved this article. Why I have choosen CS? when people ask I give same answer as written in this.

"Make decisions that will give you more choices, not fewer."

Link?

Here's the specific article: https://siliconvict.com/choose-money-first

The discussion around this thread got my attention, and you've gotten a fan. Looking forward to reading through your blog posts.

Thank you. :)

You make $600k a year from a side project?

Technically I don't work currently, so I'm not sure if this is a side project.

I was the founding engineer and Head of Eng at Reforge the past 4+ years while I was building Closing Credits. I left in August 2021. So, it was a side project for nearly 5 years.

If I have 3 side projects and no full time job at this exact moment, where do I stand? I'll delete my post if I'm violating the side project rule.

Did you not sign away the IP while you were there? If so by this comment you implicate yourself.

+1 That's a great point to make for people who are building side projects. Make sure you list your side projects in an exception in the IP clauses of your employment contract, like I did.

Out of curiousity, what does that typically look like? Named project + brief description + market it's in?

Have you ever had any pushback from legal? Presumably to the effect of "What if you take our IP and put it into that project?"

I think you're being accurate but maybe also quote the numbers from August when you still had a full-time gig.

Very cool, how long did it take from idea to working v1? Anything you'd do differently in terms of getting it to PMF faster, tech choices, or lessons learned?

I already had a different side project with 300k users so it was incredibly easy to find PMF fast because I just emailed them.

Tech choices: I never reinvent the wheel. I just take working pieces from other work that I've done and glue it together. Anything custom, I'll read how others do it.

Lessons: I probably should've chosen a different market. If I had targeted companies and taught their employees professional education rather than poor amateur voice acting hobbyist, I'd probably be making $20M ARR. But I don't mind, this is still fun.

> But I don't mind, this is still fun.

Read your blog, hopefully you aren't telling yourself that right before you fire yourself! In seriousness thanks for the insightful reply. I agree w/tech choices, I'm always thinking about reusability as I piece together my own projects.

What was the original side project that had 300k users?

Wow, congrats on the success! Is this a solo project for you, or are you working with a team?

Just me, but I do revshare with the instructors and I have a support staff on contract to handle tickets.

On your website you say you were pardoned out of a felony conviction. What was it for?

Assault w/Deadly Weapon - took 15 years to get it pardoned and expunged. The hardest battle I've fought in my life. It makes startups look easy. I'll write more about it one day, but I don't want to screw it up.

Cool to see another jailbird here turning things around. I just did 8 inside. How long were you locked up for?

p.s. I would love to fix the audio on your intro video - the hum and echo is killing me. I used to be married to a voice actor and I set up her studio and recording pipeline. [Audacity and Audition both have a quick filter to remove background noise]

Looking forward to it. Subscribed to your newsletter because I thought your essay about money being the most important thing in life was right.

It really can solve or at least, begin to solve, every problem in an individual's life.

As an ESL person I wanted to sign up for this to improve enunciation but price was bit too much

How did you land your first 5 customers and validate your idea?