X · Sep 29, 2026
The third door
A goal written at twenty, a spreadsheet that said it was impossible, and the path that was neither misery nor quitting.
When I was 20, I wrote down a goal: “$1 million net worth by 30.” It sounded insane. The year was 2010. I had a few hundred dollars in a checking account and a pile of student loans. My net worth was somewhere around negative $20,000.
A few lines above that ten-year goal, the one-year goal was “Have $1,000 in my savings that I earned.” A thousand was a stretch. A million was a different planet.
I was studying engineering, where starting salaries ran $60–80k. I opened a spreadsheet. The realistic case — middle of the range, 5% raises, investing 10% — landed around $91,000 after ten years, once the loans were gone. The all-out case, investing a third of every paycheck, still missed half a million. Hitting the number on a salary meant living on less than $25,000 a year in one of the most expensive cities in the country.
Door one was a wasted decade for an uncertain outcome. Door two was dropping the goal. The only answer was to go looking for a third door.
Within a month of my 30th birthday I opened a tax return. $1,628,705 of gross income. After tax, almost exactly a million to keep. A year later my net worth cleared $2 million. I drove a $3,000 car. I also had friends, dates, hobbies, and travel. Not a single week felt wasted.
Full disclosure: the first million had luck in it. The startup went public via a SPAC, in the COVID bubble. The second million was that stock doubling again. What came after came from my own company’s cash flow. That part is more repeatable.
The playbook I’d give my own kids is short. Interview at a lot of startups. Pick one based solely on the people. Create value above and outside the job you were hired to do. Never wait for a promotion — start doing the next job and let the title follow. Move every two to four years. From the first paycheck, automate 10% into investments, raise that share as the pay rises, and learn how not to lose the money once the checks get large.
I dropped out senior year. I joined a startup in a role I knew nothing about, in a field that had nothing to do with my degree, and I started unpaid. In the first three years I negotiated a 300% raise in salary and a 600% raise in equity. I stayed eight years — longer than I should have — and used the last four to get my feet wet on companies of my own.