http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/guy-on-the-beach-with-...
The short version is moving to Contracting, then Consulting Remotely, then Building Products while doing same, then learning how to Market them. With a good helping of Living Cheaply thrown in to keep the burn rate down.
It's a nice way to go about it, since you never need to worry about running out of money, and you can move at whatever speed you like since there's always a "day job" supplementing the product revenue.
Even better, since the business is built to run in the background while working elsewhere, once you turn off the "working elsewhere" part, you're effectively retired.
Job hopping helps with the impostor syndrome thing, which everybody has to a degree. After half a dozen stints at different companies each telling you that you're good at what you do, it eventually starts to sink in. It also helps prove to you that you can in fact pick up work quickly when you need it in this industry (usually including a nice rate bump). And of course, the more people you work for, the bigger the list of "ex-bosses friends building a team" becomes, and with it the pool of options for future gigs.
Good luck!
It is a service that offers unlimited design services for bootstrapped startups (though we actually have one VC funded startup as a client).
This side project generates about $3k weekly revenue currently (though I have only one week worth of data), and about 20% of that is profit currently (though I should be able to increase that closer 30-35% in the next couple of months).
~~a 25 year veteran of the markets, hedge funds, CTAs, equities, commodities, you name it.
1. Those are startups with limited funding and not too many employees, so they are the perfect hackers target for the perfect crime, the hacker don't have to steal anything, just copy the best strategy from time to time and use it until obsolete or just bet against you for example...
2. I don't see a 3rd party verification and audit on what exactly the employees of those companies have access to - if I am a rogue hedge fund, I have to compromise only one employee in such a company and ask him to send me all best trading strategies every month for example...
3. Hedge funds are major investors in such companies, the question is why and what information they are getting...
I would LOVE to be financially independent. I'm just wondering, if I get into quantitative trading, how many years that would take
What to avoid: avoid everyone who is selling trading strategy (in a books or online gurus and signal sellers), no sane person will do it, because the more people(money) are trading a strategy, the less effective it will become overtime...
Whereas selling it as some kind of SaaS, you could make maybe the same kind of money with just around 20 users, or even one user who invests millions.
Just think about it, why on earth I should help you (my competitor) and save you time by giving you working (and non working for that matter) trading ideas?
In the end it is a zero sum game (even less than zero when calculate the commissions and other expenses), so for me to make money, someone else have to lose...
If I ask you to sell your house and send me the money, I would sound a bit crazy, don't you think?
If one day a real AI comes a long and we finally have the singularity, who knows... but maybe the AI will be as greedy and fearful as his human parents, which wont be a good news for the human race, if you have to think about it :-)
2. Built a collaboration and communication platform that provides an easier way for my sales team to communicate with potential customers