Are you an awkward nerd with technical expertise? Do you dream of making millions in the startup world? If so, then this post is for you! I’m going to guide you on a journey to financial success, showing you how to leverage your unique skills and overcome any challenges that come your way.

This isn’t a quick fix – think of it as a roadmap to follow as you progress through your career. So don’t try to tackle it all at once – bookmark this page and come back to it as a handy reference.

With hard work and determination, you can turn your financial dreams into a reality.

Don’t Panic.

In my 10 years as a programmer, I followed a different path than most. I became a multi-millionaire without living in SF or joining Uber or Google. Those approaches work, but this is for those who want to live wherever they want (probably fully remote.)

Here is the guidance I wish someone had given me. It would have made my journey faster, and I would be much richer by now.

Your First Job: Absorb Best Practices, Crush It

You will get your first job in dev out of school, Bootcamp, or your mom’s basement. Work for a company with a dev team of at least 10, with a project manager and a separate product/design team. Wait to join that scrappy startup. Look for companies that raised their series A and are on their way up.

If you can’t get into a promising startup in SF, move to Seattle.

If you can’t hack it in Seattle, move to Denver.

If you can’t hack it in Denver, move to…. IDK, Oklahoma City or something.

The smaller/more upcoming the town, the easier it will be to get into a “good” startup because the talent pool is less competitive.

It’s not a big deal that you get your first job at a top tier name brand company.

I worked for a startup in Gainesville, FL, a college town you’ve never heard of. We were guppies compared to companies in SF, and I still learned a shit ton, and moving up was way more manageable. But it could have been better.

Be the Most Product-Aligned Dev

You will need to be able to program the latest technologies and keep on top of the latest tech trends. You need to be good and take time with this core skill set.

Learning the full stack – frontend, backend, systems/deployment, tooling, and as much design/product knowledge as possible. This is because you will become a technical cofounder one day.

You must learn to deliver more value than your peers in less time. That means being the programmer on the team who is most in line with the product. Your alpha nerd peers may not love you when you suggest building an 80% effective version of a product in 20% time. Your product and business peers will single you out as the most influential developer on the team.

The guy who is busy focusing on building the perfect code will never be considered the most influential developer by management, only by the other devs.

You are not going to fall for the alpha nerd shit. You will eventually hire and manage alpha nerds, but you must stay in line with the business needs. This separates you from the pack and fast-tracks you for critical work.

You will still need to master programming. You will need to know how to build extensible architectures, you will need to understand best practices, and you will need to be able to bust out a full feature on spec and on time. You must learn from your lead, do what they say, and pass code reviews.

You may end up on a team specializing in the backend or front end. If you find yourself pigeonholed, try to get on a team with more variety, such as the full stack team.

Take notes on how your project manager is managing the team. Take notes on what meetings are happening/when. Take notes on how they point cards. Learn enough to do their job if you had to. I suggest reading a book on agile.

Read Oreilly programming books.

Design and Product

As you separate yourself from the pack, you should learn how beautiful products are designed. Don’t just blindly implement Figma designs without a second thought. Become friends with the product/design team, learn why they design the way they do, and learn to help them understand how those decisions affect the dev team’s ability to deliver.

Ask the design lead and product lead for recommended reading – you want to learn to do what they do, even if you suck at it. Practice what they do on your side project.

You will eventually be hiring designers and product managers, which means you need a damn good sense of it.

Watch Your CEO and CTO

Consider it a safari mission to get as close to senior management as possible, socially and from a distance. Learn what your CTO and CEO are doing and why. Follow them on social media. Learn how they are positioning the company in the market. Learn your product inside and out (so well that you could sell it.) Learn about your customers and follow them on social media as well.

Understand your org chart, especially on the CTO side. You will be replicating this one day.

You Better Have a Side Project

The point of the side project is not even to build a company. Learning to do design, product, full stack development, DevOps, project management, and everything else is practice for your future. You want to learn to be a one-person building machine. Of course, you will only take some of these burdens in your future projects, but you need experience doing these things to eventually hire a team.

Make Friends

Look, I get it. I’m an introvert, and I have a social anxiety disorder. But do you want to be rich or not? Go to all company-wide events, meet everybody, and add your entire company on Linkedin and Twitter. Don’t get caught up in “He’s my boss’s boss, so I can’t talk to him (yet).” Bullshit. Senior management wants to talk to rising stars. Be interesting, be motivated. When they see that glimmer of light in your eyes, they will help raise you above your peers.

Aside from competence, getting dialed into your current team is the easiest way to build the network that will get you rich after you leave.

Read a Book

Read a mother fucking book.

Don’t stop reading books. Google “best Product book,” “best DevOps book,” etc.

Save Money, Don’t Spend Like an Idiot

This should come naturally to programmers. Part of being rich is understanding the time value of money. Don’t treat your money like shit. mrmoneymustache.com was my bible – find your own balance. It could get ugly when you go out on your own, and you need a low burn rate + a fat cash reserve to fall back on.

If you run out of money, you will go back to predictable employment, and your journey towards getting rich will be halted (save a hail mary like joining an Uber.)

Go Solo

Now you’ve worked for one (or two) well-established startups, and you’ve learned how such an organization should run. You understand full-stack development, design, product, and even a thing or two about product positioning.

You need to go out on your own.

Find Entrepreneurs

If you’re a typical nerdy programmer, your superpower is building products (Steve Wozniak), and your other half is a visionary salesman (Steve Jobs).

Fill your Rolodex with these entrepreneur types. It would be best if you also had programmers, designers, product people, etc., that you met at your previous companies. These are the firepower you can bring to a relationship.

Your counterpart will be out there, trying to start a company and looking for a tech cofounder or just “someone to build their MVP.”

Do Business

Your job is to convince these entrepreneurs that you can build their MVP, but you also know enough about startups to be their cofounder. If you don’t think the entrepreneur knows what they are doing, you may want to build their MVP for cash. After all, it would be best if you ate and you don’t have a job. Don’t accept equity from a founder you don’t believe in.

If you’re going to work on a project for free, there better be a damn quick plan to get into an incubator, angel funding, or hit ramen profitability. Don’t blow your cash stack on spending 2 years without a salary.

Follow the Winners

At some point, you’ll meet an entrepreneur who has fairy dust up their ass. That’s the one you want to follow and work with. Be as good at managing the tech/product side as they are at driving sales, finance, product & marketing.

Be on top of the industry, and know more about the technical details of cutting-edge tech than they do (right now, it’s knowing openAI, last year, it was knowing blockchain contract development.)

Be someone they can see as an equal, not an employee.

Rinse & Repeat

You’ve got to rinse & repeat. Sometimes what seemed like a great cofounder will fizzle out in a year or two. You’ve got to keep rolling with the punches, do some freelancing to keep your cash reserves strong, and no matter what, don’t go back to a W2 job.

I know it sounds so cozy, but it’s a death sentence.

One day, you will help cofound a project that blows up beyond your wildest expectations.

I am curious to know how many tries it will take.

My Journey

Here’s what my journey looked like in a nutshell:

• Worked for a seed company that got acquired, got a teensy bit of cash

• Started freelancing and making money/networking w. entrepreneurs

• Started my own startup and got burned because I needed a proper non-technical cofounder.

• Realized non-technical cofounders are the important ones and got humbled.

• Helped a few founders launch their MVPs, most flopped, but I honed my skills.

• Founded an agency to learn how to run a business… I suck at it.

• Found one cofounder who seemed to have fairy dust up his ass

• Helped him launch about 5 projects over 5 years

• Was his “doer,” “right-hand man,” “trusted counterpart”

• Advocated strongly for myself to be treated as an equal in terms of equity

• One of those projects made me a millionaire

• Now I get to play the angel game, and I’m probably done founding startups

It’s worth noting that once you have a couple million and an exit or two, there’s still plenty more to do. The startup world is incredible because there is so much opportunity for everyone. It is truly a revolution, and you can be part of it. The following 20 years are exciting for startups. I hope you join me.

Please feel free to reach out.

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