You hear about people making millions within months.

My story is definitely not that. But It's been kinda cool so I think it's worth sharing..

I’m a dad who wants to hang out with my 2 year old.

I’m a husband who still wants to date my wife after 2 years.

I live across the street from my brother and hang out a few times per week.

It took me 19 months to be able to quit my job and become a full time entrepreneur.

6 main business attempts, $90k invested, moving my family around, and more.. Just to get to my first kinda-working business.

I went from working in a big basement office in a single family home to now working in a closet in a small condo.

It’s financially irresponsible but personally, I’m living the dream and my wife still loves me for now.

Today, I’ll share more about my business attempts and what I really think of them.

Next week, I’ll probably share more about where the $90k went and how this all has impacted my family.

The main business attempts

1. Dobie Data | December 2022 - March 2023

You ever do something where you know you shouldn’t but you just want to see if you could?

That was Dobie for me.

I sold lead data of newly incorporated startups.

In other words, I found ways to gather startup founder’s contact info and sold their privacy to cold emailers.

It was hoodrat activities. It was fun and I learned a lot.

I got to $24k ARR by pre-selling the data to three unicorn startups.

I took deposits, hired my first overseas assistants/researchers, and started iterating.

Unfortunately, it turns out that some assumptions in my research process were wrong. It meant that the data was fundamentally incorrect and I wasn’t able to evaluate its accuracy.

The guilt of selling people's privacy caught up to me too.

I started looking at new founder friends and contemplating if I should add them to my data set. I never did but I hated having that lens.

So I put the hoodrat stuff to bed. I refunded everyone and ate about $5k in losses.

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2. Body By AI | April 2023 - June 2023

AI was hot. GPT-4 just came out. Body By AI was my business affair.

It was an AI fitness/accountability coach.

It was also a business that was:

• For consumers (B2C)
• Likely to be high churn
• Low revenue per user
• More ideal for fundraising

I knew I shouldn’t do it but I did it anyways.

I got some paying beta customers and was iterating fast. I worked around the clock.

I wasn’t really around for my wife and kid. I was actually kinda absent.

By default, it got to the point where my wife ended up planning every weekend with our son without me.

Not good..

So we started therapy, we got more aligned with our family goals, put more working boundaries in place, I slowed down on Body By AI, and we dodged future divorce.

The changes were relieving.
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3. Metrics | June 2023 - July 2023

This one feels like karma for the business affair and for selling people’s privacy. It’s pretty embarrassing.

I bought Metrics for $10k.

It was a pre-revenue product that was making a specialized Google Sheets that was specifically for data analytics and business intelligence.

Unfortunately, right after closing on the deal, my day job ended up getting more closely competitive with the product.

So it was either, keep guaranteed income for my family and eat the price.. or.. go against my values, embrace the conflict of interest, be an asshole, and risk getting fired.

I chose the first option.

It still feels like such a boneheaded mistake.

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4. Costflo | July 2023 - August 2023

Opportunistic Metrics Spinoff: Part 1

Costflo was premade data pipelines for people analyzing their cloud costs.

It was purely opportunistic. I didn’t care about cloud costs, the target customer, or anything.

It didn’t work at all.

But I did get better at talking to customers here. I spoke to over 20 people in the cloud cost space (aka cloud finops). Definitely a skill that I’ve tried to carry with me since.

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5. TrainerLoop | August 2023 - October 2023

Opportunistic Metrics Spinoff: Part 2

TrainerLoop was premade data pipelines and reports for online personal trainers.

At this point, I was just clawing for some confidence and sense of progress again.

With Dobie, I had 24k in presales. And for 6 months, I never made over $100.

I even lost $10k+ with Metrics.

So I joined a program called Nights & Weekends where people build projects together.

I found the first user I could help, an online personal trainer.

And I built exactly what he wanted.

I got a few more other free users and things were actually feeling pretty good here.

People ended up not really wanting to pay but my confidence was coming back.

I was having fun again.

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6. A Team Overseas | October 2023 - Present

A Team Overseas is a good old remote EA/VA agency.

Mentally, starting it was like cold plunging.

I knew I should do it. But I really didn’t want to.

An executive assistant agency just sounded boring, filled with people ops problems, etc.

But throughout the entire year, I’ve been working with my own assistants. One for all the projects above and another one for my day job.

After just getting to know them overtime and talking to their other colleagues more, I just hated the existing EA agency industry.

I heard too many stories of Filipino assistants being mistreated. I lost sleep knowing that I could do something to change it.

I felt compelled to start A Team Overseas.

And so far it’s been working!

I still can’t pay myself yet but I’m confident I will be able to soon.

Me quitting and living off of savings is me taking a bet on our growth.

The bet is that we can double within the next 12 months.

We’re just at about 10 clients and I need us to be at 20 by next July to be able to pay myself and keep the dream alive.

So what were some major takeaways from all of the different projects?

1. Founder fit over being opportunistic

I kept swinging from doing stuff that was interesting to me to doing more opportunistic ideas.

Costflo was the worst. I quit at the first sign of struggle.

That’s the problem with being purely opportunistic.

You just don’t care enough to see things through.

With Dobie, I had fun finding creative solutions to gather data. Doing hoodrat things with your friends can be fun sometimes.

And with A Team Overseas, I feel like I’m doing good in the world and stuff like that.

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2. Don’t crawl back into the comfort of code

Every time I started a new project, I’d think it was.. the one.

Then inevitably, I’d hit a slump and think it was.. dog crap.

And whenever I was in the slump, I’d find myself looking for another new thing to build.

As a dev, there’s comfort in code.

Now, whenever I feel the urge to code something new, a flag goes off in my head.

I know that I gotta sit down, write out the main problems, and prioritize.

Having priorities to dial in on makes it easier for me to build momentum.

Coffee with a line of momentum gets me out of these slumps pretty fast.

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3. Momentum setters and maintainers

Momentum has high highs and low lows. Maybe it’s part of the business addiction.

But references aside, I found that I have spikes of inspiration that set a high pace.

Things get off the ground, we ship quickly, and we’re iterating.

Then my kid gets sick, he stays home for a few days, and I’m playing catch up on everything.

Life happens and the pace of business goes down.

Having Dane, my assistant, changed this for me completely.

It felt like a superpower how I could set the momentum with my spike of inspiration and Dane would be able to maintain it.

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4. Focus while giving yourself permission to have shiny object syndrome.

Focus has been the biggest difference with A Team Overseas.

For the most part, I’ve been able to stay focused on it.

But I would go crazy if I only worked on people problems 24/7.

Shiny object syndrome still happens.

I just stopped fighting it and started guiding it towards a positive direction.

I try to do the same with my son when he yells at me.

Now, I let myself code and scratch the itch within the bounds of A Team Overseas. There a ton of interesting problems that I want to solve within our business.

I find myself writing a lot more scripts/soloware for myself. Overtime, these will become a unique advantage.

Would love to talk more to people who subbed to this anti-newsletter.

Reply here or reach out on Twitter: https://x.com/kevgumba​

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- Kevin Galang