Sahil Lavingia

Gumroad was the first project Sahil created which not only got 50 visitors from Hacker News on the day it was launched, but was also the only project of his that was helping people to earn a living, by helping them sell creative work on the internet.

Yes. Living in Palo Alto ten years ago, Sahil felt like he had missed the boat. But, fast-forward to now, having worked his way up, he was able to meet some of the known people in Silicon Valley, and new entrepreneurs have come up, forming new social circles. It's possible to do this anywhere, so long as there's a community willing to work hard.

If you work on something that you are passionate about, you will end up finding other people who are passionate about their work, and if your interest (or needs) overlap, you will meet one another.

One Friday night, Sahil designed a set of icons he'd designed. He wanted a tool to sell this digital file on the internet for $1, but no mechanism to do it was available.

Although much like in any early startup is was not yet clear where the product would be, Sahil says it was clear they had a great team, and that was an indication of potential success, and what made Pinterest a great team to join.

Sahil started by learning design and code for the web, with a simple goal to make enough money to buy some games. Soon thereafter, he took a free online course from Stanford on developing for the iPhone, doing it while he was still a high-school student. He then started to experiment, making more apps. Eventually, Sahil went to college at USC, and only lasted for four months before he dropped out and joined Pinterest to work on their iPhone app full time.

On Your First Million, Sahil Lavingia said Gumroad lets creators sell directly so they can spend more time on the work they love. Musicians, designers, writers, filmmakers, comedians, and photographers upload what they make, sell it to their own audience, and keep most of the revenue. In 2019 the company was at about $6 million a year, with 38 percent gross margins, and cash-flow positive. He started it in 2011 as a weekend project while he was employee number two at Pinterest, where he designed the iPhone app. He had lasted four months at USC and was 19. Gumroad raised a $1.1 million seed and then a $7 million Series A.

The way we are living now is not much different than we have been living for thousands of years. We might think we are special, and each one of us is so individually different, but on a grand scheme of things, that's simply not true.

If you choose to work on something, make sure it's important to you, and if you choose to work so hard you might die, do be sure it's worth dying for.

Nathan Barry, Convert Kit founder, made a significant amount of money on Gumroad selling books and software. Now Convert Kit is a huge business, doing a massive amount of good for the world.

Sahil says his happiness is about the same now as before, but he is able to make company decisions that are better aligned with their customers. He is happy that he can make great product for people who want it, delivering value and making creators' lives better.

Sure, they are scary, but we do them for the thrill! At the end of the day, you have one life, and it is important to consider whether it is worth to be sacrificing your life for something that is relatively insignificant.

Yes?!

The problems that plague us today have been the same for thousands of years. We all suffer from the same demons and distract ourselves the same ways, adopted to this day-and-age. The world 50 years from now will look very different, and yet will be very much the same.

The best we can do is to live for today, and make sure we live for our own sake. At the end of the day, we'd all be dead anyway.

Sahil knew Gumroad was running out of oxygen and the layoff were coming. When the day came though, it felt wrong. It felt like watching The Lord of The Ring, hoping for the happy ending, except that Frodo got killed and Sauron go the ring. It did not make sense.

Even though he had a support network, and people knew what was going on, failure was an awkward topic and Sahil was pretty alone. Unable to share in person, Sahil wrote a larticle about his story, called Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company .

Sahil was fully expecting to live alone in the mountains

Successful founders get less happy over time because while the numbers go up and up, their satisfaction goes down. They get disconnected from the positive impact of their companies, and the negative stories start to outshine.

The emotional impact of creating good in the world, by helping other people, is incredibly powerful.

According to Sahil, we would be a lot better off as a world if we focused more on creators and companies that are delivering value for the sake of creating valuable products, instead of explicitly chasing billions of dollars.

It's important to understand that most software-companies follow a power-law distribution, where a small number of users does so much volume, revenue coming from their accounts ends up paying for everyone else. Getting this customers requires the company to spend insignificant time on each, but when successful, it pays pack many-fold.

When Gumroad failed to raise Series B, they could not afford to have sales team anymore, and they could not build all of the features anymore, but that actually helped them grow. Instead of focusing on whales, Sahil was now able to focus on customers who legitimately loved and used his software to start their businesses.

Being a self-service platform, the

Focus on users, and how many of them are actually using your product.

50,000 people saw Gumroad on the first day, but that did not mean anything. Almost none of those people used Gumroad.

Sahil built a product that solved a problem and had a word of mouth component, enabling it to grow on its own. He says the key was to figure out the audience, and then to talk to them, to figure out how they were using the software, and if they were not, then why.

Growth-hacking only works when you've got your product and funnel figured out. Many successful startups start using "Collison Installation" , doing things that don't scale, one customer at a time.

Investors are money-managers, and they have a job to create returns for their portfolio. Those returns are tied to massive wins on companies like Uber, and Slack, and Pinterest.

A good business, growing 7% a year and trying to raise a Series B, like it was in the case of Gumroad, is not interesting to them. Investors want outliers.

A company that has great predictable numbers, but isn't growing fast enough, is less appealing than a company that is growing astronomically fast, but might crash and burn on ascend.

Lack that happens to you is out of your control, but each person can work on maximizing their personal luck.

Sahil didn't just watch "The Social Network" and move to Silicon Valley to start a company. Instead, he spent time to build apps, to write about them, to share them. He took time to advice strangers, without looking for anything in return. That led to him getting a job at Pinterest, brought him closer to the valley, connected him with founders and investors, and eventually opened all the right doors.

Friends become friends over time. Same way, luck converts over time.