Daniel Vassallo @dvassallo Twitter profile

Pinned Tweet

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 days

5,500 small bettors 🙏

20

1

168

Last Seen Profiles

@couhaida

@nidathings

@S3odAl3ssaf

@f8r50ss

@skillzvalo

@jjanghyunj

@kc511521

@RukudzoV

@Grotyle1

@moon_daughter07

@slizzy2u

@TheBestestJoe

@angelique814

@DieMaus

@DivyaNarendra

@revengeofdelrey

@rickbitch

@IamMillaJasmine

@99jj88

@wenlaunchinfo

@jory_702

@buwnito

@brauliolavoz

@0Ultranietzsche

@EastonBazzoli

@hyperdouraku

@IAmTheOlum

@papadimoulis

@AmluxJay

@PPS_SPP

@Vodkakreft

@josef_ramirez

@tondablanik

@killedbyproxy

@AlalYattaa70

@Unholy_Zig

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 month

There's been big drama about this technology recently. Back in 1999, a man named Steve Gass invented a system that sensed flesh and allowed the blade to stop and retract before it could cut into hands and fingers. This wasn't some gimmick. It actually worked. 40,000 people in…

Massimo

@Rainmaker1973

1 month

The blade of a saw carries a small electrical signal. When skin contacts the blade, the signal changes because the human body is conductive and the change to the signal activates the safety system. [📹 SawStop]

70

192

2K

675

7K

46K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

6 months

The pinnacle of engineering in one photo

182

3K

39K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

11 months

Is anyone still convinced Twitter needed 8,000 employees to keep the lights on?

2K

30K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 months

A quarter of Goldman Sachs employees are Vice Presidents

509

1K

19K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

Amazon: We want everyone back to the office! My office when I worked at Amazon:

366

730

19K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

10 months

This is how meaningful Meta’s numbers are:

286

1K

17K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

10 days

Here's what China banned. Google YouTube Twitter Facebook Wikipedia TikTok GitHub ChatGPT Reddit Instagram WhatsApp LinkedIn Signal Vimeo Discord Twitch Dropbox Medium DuckDuckGo HBO Pinterest SoundCloud BBC The New York Times The Guardian SlideShare The Washington Post Internet…

Balaji

@balajis

11 days

Here is what China built.

631

1K

11K

2K

18K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

29 days

I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say this when you have 18 million subscribers. Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness. First, do no harm.

9K

441

12K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 months

If hard work leads to success, the donkey would own the farm. - old rural saying

112

2K

11K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

- You read 100 books. 99 are meh, 1 changes your life. - You try 100 things. 99 don't work, 1 changes your life. - You meet 100 people. 99 you never see again, 1 changes your life. Life is more random than it seems. Act accordingly.

68

4K

10K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

Hot take: Start a family. Your career will thank you. You’ll realize you’ve been working directionless until then.

344

733

10K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

My real business plan: Avoid going back to this

219

681

9K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

10 months

You only become an adult once you have kids. Until then, you're just a grown up child.

1K

525

8K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

If we need to bail out 45 million student loan borrowers, maybe most degrees aren’t a very good investment.

184

830

8K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

My self-employment income progression so far: Revenue Profit 2019 $33,449 -$74,061 2020 $350,989 $209,912 2021 $336,706 $304,120 2022 $541,369 $436,752

163

372

8K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

8 months

$3,000 on my front porch. The European mind cannot comprehend this:

446

120

7K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

When I worked at Amazon we used to make some software slow on purpose. Then when a problem caused real slowness, we’d remove the fake delays and things would feel normal. The fake delays made users happier, even though they all wanted faster software. Makes you think.

225

792

7K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

2000 customers @ $39/month is almost $1M/year. - You don't need to dominate the market. - You don't need to disrupt anything. - You don't need to conquer the competition. You can add 1 new customer/day & before you know it, you'll have a $1M/yr machine. Wouldn't that be enough?

133

1K

7K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

- You read 100 books. 99 are meh, 1 changes your life. - You meet 100 people. 99 you never see again, 1 changes your life. - You try 100 things. 99 don't work, 1 changes your life. Life is more random than it seems. Act accordingly.

62

2K

7K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

6 months

“Open in App” is the worst iOS feature:

239

233

6K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

If you’re a programmer, you can: - Make SaaS products - Write eBooks - Make apps - Create video courses - Do freelancing - Give live training - Do paid support - Publish a paid newsletter If you accumulate $325/day from doing many of these at the same time, you’ll make $10K/mo.

100

965

5K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

Things you absolutely don’t need to launch: - a favicon - unit tests - a logo - an LLC - tax compliance - VAT handling - a merchant of record - terms and conditions - a privacy policy - a copyright notice - a trademark - commit messages - code reviews - code comments - a…

353

467

5K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Tech culture creates a bunch of grown-up babies. People earning $300K/yr complaining they don’t get free lunch. Bring your own lunch and have some dignity.

188

374

5K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

8 months

Believe it or not, house affordability hasn't changed much in the last 40 years. What got inflated was people's desire for bigger and more luxurious homes. The median new house today is almost 1000 sqft bigger than 40 years ago. Price per sqft, inflation adjusted:

939

598

5K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

2000 customers @ $39/month is almost $1M/year. If your software can handle 2000 customers, you can worry about scalability once the $1M/year is flowing in. Scalability doesn’t get you cutomers. First have customers, then worry about scalability. The order matters.

73

850

5K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 months

Tech people making $100/hr+ who fantasize about working on a farm just need to work a bit less and grow some tomatoes as a hobby.

Nat Miletic

@natmiletic

2 months

The longer you spend in tech, the stronger the urge to buy a farm and never touch a computer again in your life

631

5K

36K

146

233

5K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

My 2023 goal continues to be avoiding this:

188

439

5K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

A few $100K/year revenue streams, for inspiration: - 300 customers @ $29/mo - 6 sales/day @ $45 each - 1 sale/day @ $270 each - 50 students/quarter @ $500 each - 15 hrs/week @ $125/hr No capital necessary. Parallelizable. Achievable as a one-person business.

68

425

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

My 2021 income streams: • video course: $78,620 • cohort course: $79,285 • ebook: $16,952 • cutting boards: $4,495 • membership: $29,895 • freelancing: $120,000 • affiliate sales: $2,020 • saas: $4,582 revenue: $335,849 profit: $304,498

176

210

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 months

We’re taking humanity to mars, but this is too hard

265

169

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

Profile of a typical corporate drone: “Engineering leader, husband, dog parent. Likes coffee, travel, outdoors. he/him. ex: amazon, google, microsoft. Opinions me own.” Every interaction with these people is a posture to improve their employment status. A soulless conversation.

171

264

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

5 years

This is why I left #AWS :

Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts

Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

dvassallo.medium.com

142

671

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

8 months

This is why my X bio says what it says :)

Michael Arrington 🏴‍☠️

@arrington

8 months

196

1K

11K

65

298

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 month

@rockets4all2 The data is 40,000 ER visits for table saw injuries per year.

43

40

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 months

@levelsio @Wayfair You should put “used by wayfair” on your landing page now!

24

26

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Best career advice? Start a family, and nothing else will matter.

117

241

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

I've been in the self-published ebook business for 16 days now, and just crossed $40K in sales. I can't pretend I'm an expert in this profession, but here's everything I did so far. A thread.👇

74

482

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

After almost 10yrs of dealing with US immigration, I’m finally an American citizen. 🇺🇸 🦅 🗽

228

27

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

21 days

DigitalOcean is how the cloud should have been. You choose a $64/mo server, and at the end of the month you get charged $64. No NAT_GATEWAY_EGRESS_INTER_REGION nonsense fees.

193

229

4K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Just spent $360,000 today. A 10 acre lot adjacent to our 2 acres just went on the market, and we snatched it. It comes with a gorgeous salmon-bearing stream in it.

144

65

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

5 months

Asking for one-time payments is almost becoming an unfair advantage

196

155

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

A few $100,000/year revenue streams, for inspiration: - 300 customers @ $29/mo - 6 sales/day @ $45 each - 1 sale/day @ $270 each - 50 students/quarter @ $500 each - 15 hrs/week @ $125/hr All achievable on your own terms, as a one-person business.

43

390

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 months

Node.js with Express.js can serve 15,000 requests per second (1.3 billion requests per day) on a single MacBook Pro. There are only 8 billion people in the world. You probably don’t need to scale beyond one server.

204

306

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Oh look. A “fact” stopped being a fact.

44

509

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Today is my 3yr anniversary since I started working for myself. I made $760K in revenue, and had a few realizations along the way. Here are some of them:

74

330

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

- You read 100 books. 99 are meh, 1 changes your life. - You meet 100 people. 99 you never see again, 1 changes your life. - You try 100 things. 99 don't work, 1 changes your life. Almost everything consequential in life is randomly determined. Act accordingly.

56

332

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

Instead of studying how Bezos made his billions, it's much more useful to learn how someone like you is making $10K/mo.

62

276

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

The idea that anything is possible if you work hard enough is a dangerous delusion. Life is more random than it seems, and favorable payoffs are more often attributable to making good bets rather than a good work ethic. Don’t sacrifice more than it’s worth.

70

584

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

An email that worked. This is how it started:

83

143

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Whatever you do, always keep this story in mind:

62

456

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Never set goals without cost constraints: - I want to start a business… without spending more than $10K - I want to make $100K… without working more than 2hrs/day - I want to get promoted… without sacrificing my family .. and so on. Else you become a slave of your goals.

58

407

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

Break it down: $100K/year ... $8,300/month ... $270/day ... 7 sales of $39 ... 140 views @ 5% conversion Now your job is getting 140 daily views.

59

241

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

I gave up a lot of money and career status to be able to do this on a weekday without asking anyone’s permission.

85

74

3K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

9 months

More people should consider working with the seasons: High intensity for 3-4 months, and doing almost nothing for the rest of the year.

132

182

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

Forms of self-employment income for developers: 🔴 SaaS: Takes a long time for meaningful returns. 🟢 Info Products: High volatility, unpredictable, potential for extremely high ROI. 🔵 Freelancing: Predictable, stable, choose your own hours. Mix together for maximum effect!

84

338

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

11 months

”Work hard, be bold, be willful, be over-confident…” and other BS nonsense. The best thing you can do to get ahead in life is to realize you’re not special and to learn how to deal with all the uncertainty life throws at you.

Dan

@danmurrayserter

11 months

4 years ago - OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman wrote a blog on How To Be Successful Here's the breakdown:

63

777

4K

72

289

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

11 months

My 9yr old wants to start learning how to make computer games. I was making small games in C at his age, but I’d rather spare him the trauma :) What’s the best tech nowadays for teaching kids to code a Tetris-like game while also learning some programming fundamentals?

682

183

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

A few $100,000/year revenue streams, for inspiration: - 300 customers @ $29/mo - 6 sales/day @ $45 each - 1 sale/day @ $270 each - 50 students/quarter @ $500 each - 15 hrs/week @ $125/hr All achievable part-time as a one-person business.

26

206

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 month

@SteveClaflinIT It's not clear, but likely because the saw would need to be much more sturdy (more mass, stronger materials) to withstand the energy from the brake when it engages. But maybe it's mostly profit margin.

16

15

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

Something I realized when I worked at Amazon is that most people will take a (free) job title upgrade over a $50K/yr salary bump.

159

247

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

8 months

YC and some other “accelerator” called Neo are currently having a public meltdown on who runs the best Silicon Valley kindergarten for grown up children:

100

132

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

It's easier to break down targets to something concrete: $100K/year ... can be visualized as $8,300/month ... which can be visualized as $270/day ... which can be visualized as 7 sales of $39 ... which can be visualized as 140 views @ 5% conversion

28

258

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

5 years

This is how I use the good parts of @awscloud , while filtering out all the distracting hype. 👇 1/25

46

761

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

Whatever you do, always keep this story in mind:

61

451

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

Just crossed ¼ of a million sales on Gumroad from 2 products in 10mo. Ads: $12,949 Gumroad fees: $12,102 Affiliate fees: $8,185 -------------- Cost of sales: $33,236 Ask me anything. I don’t have all the answers, but I can give you my perspective. 👇

146

118

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

I’m convinced that working 40hr/wk, 50 weeks per year, for 30-40 straight years, is against our nature. Yet, the most skilled, educated, and highly paid people I know tend to be unable to consider any other path that doesn’t involve enduring this artificial lifestyle.

98

172

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Instead of studying how Elon Musk become the richest person, it's much more useful to learn how someone like you is making $10K/mo.

52

159

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

My advice to first-time info product creators: 1. Start with a very small product. 2. Choose a topic you know well that will almost write itself. Avoid doing research. 3. Timebox production to 2 weeks. 4. Charge $10. 5. Promote it! All the lessons are in #5 . Best of luck!

72

262

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

I got out of the rat race when I looked around me and realized that even the winners were miserable.

57

232

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

A killer use case for AI would be to upload all my 58,000 photos and let the machine organize them, enhance them, select the best ones from dupes, etc.

96

56

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

My two boys now have a little sister! Very grateful that I get to do it all over again, and raise another human being.

257

10

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 months

Amazon is a 1.5 trillion dollar company and still uses "top-left-round-corner.gif" to draw rounded borders. You probably don't need those fancy CSS animations for your MVP.

87

143

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

Twitter makes work from home permanent. Every tech company will follow. It's almost certain now.

Twitter Will Allow Employees To Work At Home Forever

Two months into working from home, Twitter makes it permanent for some.

www.buzzfeednews.com

59

705

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

There are two distinct types of careers: - One where the payoff follows a normal distribution (doctor, programmer, plumber, architect). - The other where the payoff follows a Pareto distribution (musician, author, startup founder, youtuber). ...

36

398

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Best career advice? Start a family, and nothing else will matter.

62

95

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

10 months

In defense of men:

52

108

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

11 months

I've never met a person who uses the words "cis" or "cisgender" who isn't also a lunatic.

99

118

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

1 year

The creator economy has been good to me this year. Thank you to everyone who supported what I’m doing! 🙌

92

52

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 months

There is no reason to ever live like this. Have some self-respect even when you have nothing.

Suhail

@Suhail

3 months

Our room during YC when we first started Mixpanel in 2009. Stay strong founders. You got this!

86

108

2K

156

35

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

People tend to conflate the desire to work for yourself with the ambition to do grandiose things. I’m not trying to become the next Zuckerberg. I just want to wake up whenever I want. Take mid-day naps. Spend time with my kids without asking for permission. That sort of thing.

37

158

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

My business plan is to avoid going back to full-time employment.

66

140

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 years

People tend to conflate the desire to work for yourself with the ambition to do grandiose things. I’m not trying to become the next Zuckerberg. I just want to wake up whenever I want. Take mid-day naps. Spend time with my kids without asking for permission. That sort of thing.

51

162

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

8 months

Tech people making $150/hr+ who fantasize about working on a farm just need to work a bit less and grow some tomatoes as a hobby.

96

97

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Hit $1M in revenue 3yrs into self-employment: • twitter course: $287,513 • small bets community: $284,030 • gumroad ¼ pm: $205,004 • aws book: $144,036 • p&l membership: $46,820 • userbase: $12,336 • freelancing: $10,004 • affiliate fees: $6,048 • cutting boards: $4,495

84

128

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

9 months

Barbell strategy: Either work at a big company where you get paid well or work for yourself. No middle. Most people at startups are overworked and underpaid, and instead of a few buttons all they have to show for is nothing (startups fail).

Siqi Chen

@blader

9 months

It's depressing to see so many talented people from top schools with amazing resumes go work years at FAANG, and the most they can point to having shipped are a few buttons in one minor workflow. I mean I know FAANG can afford it, but you can't. Work at a startup!

256

291

4K

109

127

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

I got out of the rat race when I realized I didn’t envy the winners’ lifestyle.

37

148

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Forget about becoming something. Just do stuff. - Don't try to become a writer. Just write. - Don't try to become a programmer. Just make something you need. - Don't try to become an entrepreneur. Just start fending for yourself.

44

305

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

4 months

I once joined Andrew Tate's community as a "market research" exercise. His reengagement emails are often hilarious. All the dark patterns you can imagine, but still funny. "Instead you have nothing!" 😅

180

60

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

7 months

I learned a lot about the heart over the last 2 weeks, and discovered an amazing similarity between our heart and distributed computer systems. Let me show you how our heart deals with the CAP theorem. Here's my story: Starting in August, I increased my exercise volume to try…

114

180

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Instead of studying how Bezos made his billions, it's much more useful to learn how someone like you is making $10K/mo.

60

102

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Hit $500K in revenue 2 years into self-employment:

83

34

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Ways you can make money in 2021 - Writing ebooks - Making video courses - Giving live courses - Making software apps - Freelancing - Starting a podcast - Starting a newsletter - Starting a YouTube channel - Starting a community $95/day from 3 of these will make you $100,000/yr

46

201

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Never set goals without cost constraints: • I want to make something… without spending more than a week on it • I want to make $100K… without working >10hrs/wk • I want to get promoted… without sacrificing family time ... and so on Else you become a slave of your goals

39

268

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

• Don't try to become a writer. Start writing. • Don't try to become a programmer. Start making something you need. • Don't try to become an entrepreneur. Start fending for yourself. Forget about the label. Just do stuff.

45

260

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

Everyone wants to decouple time from money. The problem? It's an extremely unpredictable way to make a living. For every successful creator, there are thousands who make nothing or almost nothing. So, how do you make the unpredictable, predictable? Here's what I learned:

63

243

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

3 years

I’m convinced that working 40hr/wk, 50 weeks per year, for 30-40 straight years, is against our nature. Yet, the most skilled, educated, and highly paid people I know tend to be unable to consider any other path that doesn’t involve enduring this artificial lifestyle.

75

149

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

The idea that anything is possible if you work hard enough is a dangerous delusion. Life is more random than it seems, so act accordingly and think in bets.

58

223

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

9 months

Short term US treasuries are at over 5.5% now. $218,000 buys you $1,000/mo in almost risk-free income. This is the base rate that any other investment has to beat.

67

150

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

2 years

Just hit $500K on Gumroad. Ask me anything. I don’t have all the answers, but I can give you my perspective. 👇

179

84

2K

Daniel Vassallo

@dvassallo

10 days

@dangc8k @balajis Can't look at things in isolation.

56

1

2K