I Bought a Year of Time for $200,000
Week 69 of Founding Typogram
Hey friends! It has been a very busy week for the two of us at Typogram. We are at the final crunch to launch our product to our pre-order customers! While every feature is built, there is always little stuff that we need to fix here and there and a production pipeline that needs to be put in place before the launch day. I am excited and nervous.
I started this journey on Aug 2nd, 2021, and I wrote my first newsletter post on that day. It marked a new beginning for me. Before that day, I was a designer at a big corporation who liked prototyping with code but had never built a production-grade app from the ground up. I didn't know what would happen and how long it would take me to reach the first milestone. A year and four months later, we have an app ready to launch to paying customers. It marks another beginning, one where we get out of our cocoons and face the real world. I thought it would be timely to reshare my first newsletter, to remind myself of the original starting point that I came from, along with the hopes and dreams I had then, and I have now.
Hi, I’m Wenting. I used to work for Adobe as a senior experience designer. During my time there I worked on several projects - Adobe Fonts, Adobe Illustrator on iPad, and Adobe XD. I specialize in Typography, a lifelong passion of mine.
I am passionate about what I do, and I am happy about my $200,000 annual salary. Last Friday on July 30th, 2021, I finished my 6 years journey working on a job I absolutely loved. Today is my first day at my new job, co-founding a company with Hua Shu.
Leaving my well-paid tech job to pursue a not-so-well-paid startup life is a tough decision. What makes it easier is a mindset that I have been putting onto myself: I’m buying a year of time for $200,000. Who wouldn’t buy time with money if they can?
There are two main reasons why people spend money: a) for consumption, like foods, or movies; b) for investment. I’m buying my time as an investment. Compared to my cushy tech job, obviously, this is a really risky investment.
Staying at my corporate job would be similar to investing in an index fund. It averages at a healthy APY and thanks to compound interest, I will see a steady return over a long period of time.
Starting my own company would be similar to investing in cryptocurrency. It is looking for that steep growth by bearing a big risk. Over a short time period, I could lose everything or have a big gain.
This investment is made to myself. I am aspired to be an angel investor. I ask myself if I am looking for opportunities to invest money in other people’s startups, why don’t I invest in my own startup? $200,000 for 50% equity, where else do I get a term sheet like that?
Warren Buffet says the greatest mistakes in investing are mistakes of omission, as opposed to mistakes of commission. I thought, what if I never invest in myself? Would that be my worst investment mistake? I would rather make a mistake of commission.
I will share daily for the first 30 days about my journey as a founder. I will share more about my problem space and ideas to solve them. My startup is about tech and typography. Follow me on Twitter to follow along my journey.
I hope you enjoy this re-post! I am sorry that I currently don’t have time to create new content. But soon enough, our product will be launched and I will have much more to share! Stay tuned!
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You can setup a Discord server to gather with your community for the day of your launch