I built a business that lets me live on the beach full time

But also as Krishnamurti said "Truth is a pathless land." And as Lin Chi said "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." Take the parts here that resonate with you and build the rest the way in a way that works for you. It will probably take commitment and multiple failed attempts to get there. Just accept that from the get-go. Not everyone has the tolerance for risk to go down this road though.

This is a really astute observation.

Both my parents were economics professors and I have a degree in economics. I feel like this concept was instilled in my core, and poisoned my thinking, but it’s fundamentally not true.

I’ve come to finally learn in old age that the market is full of inefficiencies that can be exploited, they are everywhere.

If you’re reasonably smart, or even just well-informed on a specific subject, things that seem obvious and trivial to you will in fact be observations you can profit from.

The world is full of $20 bills lying on the ground to reference a popular punch line.

I agree and I think it's partially a circular argument. In discussions of stocks, you'll hear that one 'cannot beat' 'the stock market' and you'll hear phrases like, "already priced in" "efficient market hypothesis" and so forth. Which is different than the sentiment that it's 'very hard' or even 'unlikely' to do something like that, which I sympathize with.

In the long-term, markets are certainly efficient. However, the period of inefficiency is determined by the absolute quantity of profit dollars available in the market which in itself determines the competition. That is, the quantity of ticks (time) required for a dynamic optimization w.r.t. profit extraction is the measure of competition in some market, and thereby the degree of efficiency.

It is then true, that in the most competitive markets, the ones with the most capital, have a very small window of inefficiency, but they do exist. It requires a lot of capital to dynamically extract profit from those inefficiencies. An example of this would be the near hegemony of Citadel Securities in making markets. It is impossible for anyone today to compete in the market-making (an advanced arbitrage) industry without tons of capital.

However, we are time-bounded beings so there is always present an inefficient market. The challenge of the proprietor is then to determine that market which can provide a return to his constrained capital.

For instance, a restaurant can give a 15% annual ROI, which outperforms the S&P. The Citadel is not going to be interested in this inefficiency because that ROI is unavailable to the amount of capital they're trying to invest. So what we see is that the most competitive markets beget the most capital, because they have the most profit available to extract absolutely; then the most amount of resources, where capital is the analogue, are invested into those markets--so any inefficiency is quickly eroded.

This means that just like the restaurant, there are markets that remain untouched for long periods of time due to their inability to return large amounts of capital in absolute terms. These markets then have a great ROI in terms of percent. It is these markets that are available to the proprietor with low capital.

This is why the startup advice of finding a niche first is so salient, they are always necessarily underserved non-competitive markets. There's the other cycle from crossing-the-chasm which removes enterprises from this market who have the same idea as they scale, that's a separate explication, but this cycle allows the period of inefficiency to be maintained in those markets through that self-regulation.

I’m with you, this joke haunts me daily. I studied economics in undergrad, and market efficiency is such a basic tenet that it’s really hard to see opportunities that don’t just look like a mirage.

The existence of the hedge fund industry is a paradox for the idea of efficient markets. If markets are efficient, then the value added of hedge funds is zero. And if markets are efficient, hedge funds should only be able to charge their value added in fees, which is zero. Hedge funds charge a lot of fees. PE and VC funds charge even more. So markets are not efficient.

it reminded me of the time i did start my own business and the number of people that tried to talk me out of it was overwhelming. that's when i learned that a lot of people hate the successes and freedoms that others have.

There should be a name for this.. I want to call it Houston's Law. Basically when dropbox was pitched on HN everyone said it was dumb and easy. To paraphrase: "It's just rsync with a fuse filesystem..."

Or you could write a script to do so. I don't use automated tools, because they all sucks, have limitations, and the time you spend learning and fixing tools written by others (assuming you can) is more than the time you spend writing your own scripts.

Instead of spending all that money on a tool that you will have to continue to pay, how much would have you spent to make a tool like that by built exactly for your needs and how you wanted? Probably a tool like that, without useless features like a GUI (a tool meant to be used by a technician doesn't need one), could have been built in a week, or even less time.

Does anyone have any tips on how to avoid this or books to read, as I feel like I have this problem. I've been trying for nearly a decade to start a profitable side project, but any ideas I come up with are too technical so end up being hard to sell and/or complicated to build. If someone told me of an idea like this I'd probably also dismiss it :-)

Having a high limit credit card allows you to build credit, earn rewards and have a safety net in case you need it.

Debt isn’t a scary thing as long as you know how to use it intelligently.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”

“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”

“Millions – then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

(not my story, original author unknown)

E.g. asking existing employers to step down to part time or going on contract while taking on part time contracts elsewhere. When I took my first contract (currently back on full time), I took a 40% contract and negotiated with my then-boss to step down to 60%, which let me build up a bigger cushion first before I went onto contracting full time.

Critical that people don't underestimate the multiple they should be asking for, though, and actually set aside enough money and ensure they're properly insured etc.

I once worked for a few months (thanks to an acquisition) in an open-office plan a few stories up a tall building.

Whole floor was open except HR (team room along the outside, with windows), a few meeting rooms (along the outside, with windows) and managers' offices (along the outside, with windows). All those closed-in rooms around the perimeter were fully glass, since otherwise the rest of the place would have been really damn dark. One of four walls of exterior windows was part of the main, open, office area.

The specific situation at my desk: my back to my skip-level manager's glass-walled office, whose desk faced in at my back (else other people would be able to look over the manager's shoulder as they worked, and obviously that's horrible), area behind me also a major walkway for ~1/6-1/5 of the total floor, desks were truly-open cubicle-system-construction thingies–so, "walls" are the same height as the desks, nothing resembling an actual visibility- or noise-blocking wall anywhere. The woman whose desk was directly across and facing mine often hummed to herself while "in the zone". In my line of sight, just top-left of my monitor was a large TV mounted on the central pillar (bathrooms, elevators, tiny break & coffee room) playing (muted, mercifully) company propaganda and announcement-videos and slideshows all fucking day. The floor shook when anyone walked anywhere on our ~half of it, which meant my monitor shook. Probably 150 people on that floor. So, my monitor was shaking much of the time.

There were also some pretty astounding cultural problems that overlapped (the fucking nerf-fights the balding 40-year-olds a couple desks down from me would engage in daily, to pick maybe the most minor problem), but I'm sticking just to the problems with my desk per se. I have no idea how anyone was expected to get anything done in that environment. It was hell.

How am I suppose to work when I can hear every sound made by 100 other people?

At least divide things up into team size rooms.

In terms of personal taxes, generally wherever you last spent 6+ months in a fiscal year last. more than half a fiscal year somewhere you are deemed resident there. If you haven't spent 6+ months somewhere you're still resident in the country you were resident last year. Still, I know some nomads who just don't pay taxes and have some third world country as their last residence: they just hope they won't be bothered given their situation is hard to investigate.

If you're US then you also pay US taxes on top (unless you just ditch your citizenship).

Things may get more complicated based on having property / a family somewhere and laws / exceptions in some specific countries.

There is a lot of contract work in Frontend/Backend and understandably it uses most popular stacks: Javascript/React/Ruby/Rails/Python/Django/PHP etc

There is nothing special about contractors, it's just a tradeoff fiscal benefits / employer's flexibility.

Once you have that, you can attract other senior people to your lifestyle business, which seems like what has happened: https://www.expatsoftware.com/services.html

Even with 6 years personally, going to clients on your own is intimidating