My name is Daniel, I just turned 21. By that age, I had built two startups and lost about 80 million rubles.

I'll start over. Since I was 14 years old, I have been a proponent of libertarianism and studied Hayek's works a lot, which instilled in me a love for economics. I've been watching and analyzing a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that I understand how to make money from macroeconomic trends.

The first capital — 4 million rubles — was given to me by friends to manage. I've always had an environment with money. Since the age of 15, I have been a trustee for many clients and have traded on various markets: the stock market (USA, Russia) and later — in the crypt. Everything was going great, and the total portfolio grew to 50 million rubles.

However, over time, I got tired of it. I have always been inspired by the stories of large companies, and at the age of 17, when I was in 11th grade, I decided to launch a startup, Tap Table: a two—way online table reservation service in restaurants.

We had a mobile application for B2C, and a SaaS booking management platform for B2B. I had absolutely no experience and understood almost nothing about the IT market. But in a year, having made a thousand mistakes, we made the MVP and grew to revenue of 3.5 million rubles. He managed a team of up to 20 people, took 43rd place in the App Store, conducted 210 B2B sales to restaurants, integrated with Marriott hotels, and worked in Krasnodar, Sochi, Gelendzhik, and Rostov.

I traveled a lot — China, Singapore, Dubai, Georgia, Malaysia — the year 2023 was a real prime time. I wasn't worried about the investment round as long as I had my own money. But since all my efforts were focused on the startup, I stopped investing and invested almost all the money in the project.

If it's interesting, I can tell you in detail the whole startup journey, how it was.

As a result, in April 2024, I decided to close the project, as we could not find investments. It was very painful, because the metrics and conversions were good. We worked from 2022 to 2024.

I must say right away that it was a very emotional and stupid decision, I was only 18 years old at the time, I just couldn't stand it. 😊

By June 2024, I had returned to investing. I was given 15 million rubles to manage, and in 3 months I earned 40 million. The money was pouring in — I felt like I was almost a rock star. 🌟

But in August, bitcoin collapsed to 47,000, I had 4 shoulders, and I lost everything — my money and the money of my clients, about 70 million rubles. It was a shock that changed my life.

In September, the news came out that Yandex had bought my startup competitors, and I just smiled. 🤣

Then, with the same CTO, we quickly do a "tapalka" support Durov — when Durov was imprisoned, we gained 400 thousand users. But I end up in the hospital, problems start with a client whose money I lost, and I stop running the project. My co—founder, a programmer, didn't want to take over, so we abandoned the project.

These are the results of 2024: the closure of a startup, the loss of 70 million rubles and an abandoned project with 400 thousand users.

It's been almost a year now, and I'm still looking for myself, but I'm slowly getting back into the game — I'm currently working on an AI agent for a business. 

Something like that, friends. See you soon! By the way, I have a channel with thoughts, life and all that.

TG channel @matchpoint8