Forget about the Money

Introduction

If you're reading this, I trust the algorithm targeted you because you're motivated by money. Rich people love saying money isn't everything. I intend to arrive at that conclusion myself.

Most of life's physical problems are solved with money. I don't need to list them out. Get the best medical treatment with money, provide the best tutoring to your children with money, experience all that life has to offer with money.

Mental problems less so. Personal relationships get trickier with money. Not necessarily harder, but definitely more complicated and in no way easier. It's harder to trust people when you have money. And money can't buy clarity on what you actually want to do with your life.

So why did I title this article "forget about the money"? All I've been doing is defending the idea that money is very, very important.

It is important.

But in order to make money, you have to forget about it.

You can keep a pulse on what you spend, what you invest, what you earn. But your obsession with money and your worry over money is the reason you will never make a lot of it.

Forget everything you think you know about money, because you have never been taught how to make money. You have only been taught how to worry about it, and this is holding you back.

Quick disclaimer: I have absolutely nothing to sell you, I promise. Another disclaimer: I'm not "rich". I'm comfortable. I left my job at Meta six months ago where I was making half a million dollars a year to start a company. I don't have all the answers. But I've learned a few things that might help if you're considering the same path.

Lesson 1: Money is a waste product.

That sounds ridiculous. Let me explain.

When you do work you enjoy, and you're good at it, money follows. Not immediately, nor easily. But inevitably. "Yeah no shit Vas, everyone says that". You misunderstand me.

You should not chase money. You should chase doing something noteworthy. The road to getting there is hard work. But the road is 10x longer if it's something that you don't enjoy. The road is 10x longer if it's something you're bad at. And the 'money' is a byproduct of the noteworthiness, so why would you pretend that you have a chance at doing something noteworthy if you're in a field you hate and are also not good at? You will not find money there.

The people who make real money: not salary money, not "comfortable" money, but real wealth, are not thinking about money while they work. They're thinking about the work. The money shows up as exhaust from the engine. A byproduct. It is literally excrement from the process.

This is not feel-good LinkedIn platitude. I don't want you to read through this and get a sudden burst of 'motivation'. I want you to change your relationship with the idea of money.

When you're obsessed with money, every decision gets filtered through "what pays more right now?" and "does my net worth increase or decrease as a result of this action". It is impossible to think long term with this mentality. And that filter will consistently point you toward safe, incremental, short-term choices. The kind of choices that cap your upside.

When you're obsessed with the work, you make decisions based on "what compounds" and "what can I spend the rest of my life doing because I truly enjoy it?" Those decisions may look stupid in year one, reasonable in year three, and brilliant in year ten. If it's unclear what I'm talking about: a simple and stupid example is Mr Beast when he uploaded 100 videos that went nowhere. He enjoyed it, and became good at it, so who cares. He's rich. Do you think he cares that he's rich? Probably. But I promise you the sheer effort and willpower required to get him to where he is now transcends the desire to get "rich".

Lesson 2: The venn diagram of career choice.

The only Venn diagram that matters is then: What do you enjoy doing? What are you good at?

That's it. It's two circles. The overlap represents your career choices that give you a fulfilled life, and leave behind the waste byproduct of money.

I'm probably not the first person to tell you that. When I first saw that, and it was probably on some Facebook video in 2015, it felt restrictive.

I enjoyed video games, and I was good at it too. Should I have dropped out of high school or college to play video games all day long?

Obviously not. Not because the framework is wrong. Because I was 16 and had experienced approximately nothing. I didn't know what I enjoyed, I just knew what I'd been exposed to. I didn't know what I was good at, I knew what came easy in a controlled environment with no stakes. Clash Royale isn't a passion it's a time pass, believe me you are destined for more.

The Venn diagram doesn't work until you've actually lived enough to fill it in honestly. You need reps. You need to try things that seem boring and discover they're not. You need to try things that seem exciting and discover they are, actually, just boring. You need to fail at things you thought you'd crush and succeed at things you almost didn't attempt.

People say they enjoy things they think they should enjoy. They undersell what they're good at because confidence and arrogance are sometimes hard to tell apart. Or they oversell what they're good at because they've never tested it in a bigger pond.

Be painfully honest with yourself (this part takes time and experience). What would you do for free? What do people come to you for? Where do those two answers overlap?

That's your thing and everything else is noise. And yes, this can change as time goes on and you explore facets of yourself. Get out of the house and experience more life than you already have. If you're 18 years old, for example, I promise you your passion is not rug pulling crypto coins on Twitter or selling $50 stamps to Grandmas through Facebook Ads. You're going for a quick buck and that's great, but you're cashing in too early when you could've invested in yourself. More on that later.

Lesson 3: This is for everyone, but not really.

A quick caveat: not everyone CAN do this. Everyone should absolutely try, especially if money is still your motivator. But not everyone is made for a life like this.

I don't mean that in a gatekeeping way. I mean it statistically, practically, and honestly.

The nature of any ecosystem is that there are people who are hungry and will lock themselves in a room for weeks if it means getting what they want, and there are people who prefer peace and stability. Neither is wrong. They're different risk profiles with different definitions of a fulfilled life.

If you don't believe in yourself, and I mean genuinely, in your gut, not performatively, your risk calculus changes completely. The expected value of a safe job versus an uncertain venture shifts. The math is different for different people.

If you're reading this far into an article about money and work and risk, you're probably at least curious. Curiosity is enough to start. You don't need to feel a "burning fire" or know you're "destined for greatness" or any of that garbage. You just need to be willing to run the experiment. So run the experiment.

Quick side bar: many people wake up, clock into a job they hate, come home, scroll Instagram reels while half-watching Netflix, and justify it with "I have to pay the bills." When anyone suggests they explore something else, they call it privileged.

Every opinion is privileged in some way. But the "I have to pay the bills" crowd treats their situation like a prison when it's actually just inertia.

If you knew what was waiting for you on the other side of the experiment, you would not sleep, you would work day in and day out to make something out of nothing on the side.

Am I admitting to starting Varick Agents while I was still at Meta, working 18-hour days to see if there was potential before I finally quit to go full-time?

No. I am not admitting to that. That would be against the terms of my employment.

But hypothetically, if someone were to do that, they would dramatically reduce their risk. They'd have income while testing their idea, and a safety net while building conviction. That person, a niche micro-influencer on Twitter in the AI space, would now have real world data to back up their thesis, that then gives them the confidence to dive in head first.

The "I have to pay the bills" crowd acts like it's all-or-nothing. Quit your job tomorrow or stay forever. That's a false binary. You can build on the side, and be strategic about your risk. Privilege isn't about having options, it's about seeing them.

Lesson 4: Spend money to make money.

This one took me a while to internalize.

When you're in employee mode, every dollar feels precious. You earned it with your time / labor / energy. Spending it feels like losing it forever. This feeling will persist when you first start a business. You'll want to try to do everything yourself, pinching every dollar along the way. This is setting yourself up for failure, believe me.

When you're in builder mode, money is not real, it is simply a tool. The goal is to deploy it where it compounds rather than hoard it as your strategy to wealth.

That means hiring the contractor who is better even though they cost more. It also means buying the tool that saves you ten hours a week, so that you can spend your time elsewhere. Invest in the thing that accelerates your learning curve, because all growth is exponential. The only thing that is not exponential, quite poetically, is the cost of money spent.

Poor people (and I mean this in mindset, not net worth) optimize for saving money. Wealthy people optimize for saving literally everything else (time, energy, even mental bandwidth). If you cannot wrap your head around this one, come back to it when you start a business that experiences even a little bit of success.

I'm not saying be reckless, just understand the difference between spending and investing: one depletes while the other multiplies.

Lesson 5: Take asymmetric bets.

Most people avoid risk entirely, some people take stupid risks, and very few people take smart risks. Another cliche but they're always true: the biggest risk you can take is taking none at all.

A smart risk is asymmetric: limited downside, unlimited upside.

Starting a company while employed? Asymmetric. Worst case, the company fails and you still have your job. Best case, it works and you build something real.

Quitting to start a company with two years of savings? Asymmetric. Worst case, it fails and you go get another job (with better stories to tell and more experience under your belt). Best case, you never work for someone else again.

Putting your entire net worth into a speculative investment? Not asymmetric, you can lose everything you have ever worked for and have to start from scratch, on a pipe dream. That's just gambling, and stupid gambling at that. There are more likely ways to 10,000x your money.

The game is finding bets where you can afford to be wrong, but being right changes everything. "Afford" varies person to person, and "changes everything" varies person to person.

Most people never take these bets because they're optimizing for the wrong thing: trying to avoid losses instead of maximize gains. You are playing defense in a game that rewards offense. Take more shots instead of defending your goal because no one is on the other team.

Lesson 6: play long-term games.

The most counterintuitive thing I've learned: don't cash in early.

But Vas, I thought you said don't gamble! Shouldn't you know when to take your chips off the table?

Every successful person I've talked to has a version of this story. They had an opportunity to take a payout: sell the company, take the promotion, cash out the equity, and they didn't. They kept building, until the thing they would have sold for X became worth 10,000X. Do you understand what that means, 10,000X? It means when someone offers you a million dollars for your company, you turn it down, and eventually sell for 10 Billion.

The temptation to cash in early is enormous. When you've been broke, or stressed, or uncertain, the idea of locking in gains feels so rational. It feels irresponsible to behave any differently.

This could not be further from the truth.

If you're building something that's working, the best move is almost always to keep building. Let it compound. Don't interrupt the compounding. You can take a few chips off the table, sure. But never exit the compounding process completely.

This applies to skills too. Don't cash in your expertise for a comfortable job too early. Keep investing in yourself, keep getting better. The gap between good and great and phenomenal is where all the value lives. And to be clear, there is little value in good. The difference between being top 10% in a field, and being top 1% in a field is not 10x, it's 1000x. The difference between being top 1% in a field and top 0.1% in a field is not 10x, it's 1000x. Invest, compound, and don't cash in until you win.

Alright Vas just put the agentic AI B2B SaaS in the bag we all know you're just writing this as an article because twitter is boosting articles in the algorithm.

Fine. The takeaway is:

Stop thinking about money and start thinking about what you're building. What is the noteworthy accomplishment that you can showcase to the world, and to yourself, after 5 years?

Find the overlap between what you enjoy and what you're good at. Be honest about whether you have the stomach for risk. If you do, start taking asymmetric bets. Invest in yourself: your skills, your tools, your time. Play long-term games. Don't cash in early.

Money is the exhaust, not the engine.

The engine is you, your work, your craft, your obsession with getting better at something that matters. Feed this engine with everything you have, including money.

Point that engine somewhere real, and the money will follow.

Everyone I know who's made real money got there by forgetting about the money and focusing on the work.

Six months ago I walked away from half a million dollars a year because I believed that. I still believe it. Ask me again in five years how it worked out.