Daniel Vassallo's Portfolio Of Small Bets

In early 2019, Daniel Vassallo quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for himself. To some people, "working for myself" might mean a bunch of things - consulting, blogging, founding a venture-backed startup.

Daniel's approach is a little bit different. He's building a portfolio of small bets, and openly documenting his progress along the way.

He's also sharing his processes, tools, and tactics, and packaging them up as Info products. Selling the process of building his portfolio helps fund his portfolio.

A few hours ago, he shared an update on how 2020 went for him. Here's the tweet.

Sales of $346,581 and a profit of $210,390 in the second year of any business is impressive. Even moreso if that business is self funded. Even moreso if the sole employee of the business is the founder of it. Really incredible.

He sells his Info products through Gumroad and, late last year, signed up as it's quarter-time Head of Product. A really unusual move, but a huge win for both of them. Daniel is - quite literally - dogfooding Gumroad to build his own business, and rolling his learnings (and those of his growing audience) into the product. Genius.

Daniel is not alone - there's a growing number of solo enterepreneurs taking the "portfolio of small bets" approach. Small bets are creating a community of founders.

Pieter Levels is probably the most recognizable name in the community (I recommend reading his book, MAKE). Jack Butcher has grown Visualise Value to $1,000,000 a year in revenue over the course of 18 months. And, of course, there's Pat Walls of Starter Story who inspired this blog. Each are also living proof that remote working works.

If you've not already done it, I highly recommend following Daniel's journey on Twitter.