If you know you're screwed, and you've made a couple of million bucks, why aren't you just closing up the company and going home to have a money party?
That probably sounds quite harsh if it's something you love, but a million bucks is like economic freedom for life, and you can try again with a different idea later where there's less active competition. Sounds to me like you did pretty well for yourself.
We're not screwed per se, just treading water just below break even. We still have a significant paying user-base but our churn is higher than our new user acquisition rate.
We keep trying to fix that but over the past year or two we've had little success.
I like the team and we're working on another project that could potentially re-ignite the company so I haven't given up all hope yet.
I committed a block of money back into the company when I decided to hire a team. We haven't burned through it yet (that's the 6-12 months runway that's left at this point) but once it's up I can't justify putting in any more and wouldn't feel comfortable asking an investor to put money into something that I wouldn't fund myself.
In this day and age, a million bucks is not even close to an economic freedom. @webwright has a good post on what he calls "Fuck you money", the amount you'd need to retire rich. Well worth the read.
Sure it is. You just have to have more reasonable expectations. A million bucks can easily generate 30-50k a year in dividends, and without a mortgage, that is enough to live a comfortable lifestyle. You can't go on permanent vacation, but you can live and work on whatever you want to without needing a job.
200k is a silly number to use in this calculation. Most studies show that "happiness" stops having big returns past something like 70-80k. Could I spend 200k a year? Sure no problem. Do I need to? No way.
While 200K is silly, I don't think 1M is really enough to never have to work again assuming a family.
You would have to purchase a house, it should be in a safe area with a good school district, so that's probably 200K? (I don't know what prices would be far away from the coasts)
So now you have 800K generating dividends for you, plus you have to save every year to be able to cover your kids college tuition since you can't get any need based money due to your nest egg. Even assuming you somehow do that on 50K/year (or your kids get merit scholarships), in 30 years (by the time you are 60) your 50K has the purchasing power of ~25K.
I'm personally not planning on retiring at 30 and never doing any productive work ever again. The point would be, that with 30-50k coming in passively and no mortgage to pay, I could live comfortably and work on whatever I wanted to whenever I wanted to.
As for kids college, I had parents that helped some, and I paid for a significant portion myself (i also paid a significant portion of my wife's). I plan to save for my kids college, but it will be on the order of 1k a year or so. With 18 years of stock returns, it should be a decent amount for them. If it isn't enough for their desired school choice, they will have to pay the rest. That seems more than fair to me, but it won't be a huge sacrifice to put away 1k a year.
Also note, that the above linked article was doing math based on 4.2 mil. I think 1 mil would be enough to consider myself totally free, I'm certain 4.2 would be way more than enough.
Edit: Also, by only taking dividends and not principle, any inflation should also be reflected in the stocks. This means the purchasing power should stay constant assuming competent investment decisions.
1) You don't need to pay your kids college tuition
2) Without a mortgage or debt, even 25k goes a very long way. Add up all of your non-housing bills, it shouldn't come anywhere close to 25k, I just did a sample budget and it still leaves 500 in savings per month.
1) So shoulder your kids with massive debt or hope the educational system has changed enough that college degrees aren't required for everything and things are affordable. Nice.
2) Assuming a low cost of living state, and you live frugally for just yourself, I totally agree. I don't think that anyone would say raising a family on that much is easy in any part of the country. (I'm not saying its impossible, just not easy, probably to the point where you would say screw it and go back to work.)
1) I paid for my own college and know others as well. I also know many people whose parents paid for their college. Guess who earns more out of this admittedly small sample? When you have to shoulder your own education you make many more money-making decisions, so that poetry degree from $200k school doesn't look so hot.
2) It's not that frugal, that's my point, here's the budget I put together, which still has luxuries like cable tv, smart phones, and $250 a month for going out. https://www.budgetsimple.com/budget/DKwEDsxt
Assumptions- You own your house outright, you own a car outright. There are other costs like property taxes and car repairs, but with $500 savings per month, those should be easily covered in a year.
EDIT- It's also worth noting, we're talking about income solely from dividends on $800k. Once your kids are going to college if you want to help them out, you have 800k (plus the $500 in savings per month to help them.)
That article may be worth reading, but it is about retiring "rich", not simply retiring. It assumes a yearly lifestyle cost of $200k per year, which is redonkulously high. You don't need to be "rich" to be economically "free".
Most people can live quite comfortably for far less than $200k/yr when they are debt free and (figuratively) sitting on a giant pile of cash, especially if they aren't tied to living in SV, NYC, etc.
Yeah, that sort of depends on how expensive of a house you want, and whether "retired" really means "zero work and zero income" or just means you have the freedom to work on whatever you want and never need to take a full-time day job again.
If you're the "permanent vacation" type of retired then $200k / year fixed income might be low. Waterfront properties, luxury hotels and first-class plane tickets are expensive. You're at least 1-2 orders of magnitude from private jet money.
If you're the "I paid off my mortgage and cars, set aside my kids' tuition account, and now my only expenses are food, utilities and taxes, and now I have years of runway to build my next project, plus free time to do hobbies, raise my kids, and enjoy life" type, then a 2-4 million payout is probably plenty to qualify for "FU money." That's more than most people make in a lifetime, so if you get it in a lump sum, you're set.
That probably sounds quite harsh if it's something you love, but a million bucks is like economic freedom for life, and you can try again with a different idea later where there's less active competition. Sounds to me like you did pretty well for yourself.