Again in 2012, the yr I left banking and three years after I began Monetary Samurai, I had a alternative: run a way of life enterprise or construct a venture-backed firm.
I selected the life-style enterprise. After 13 years in equities I used to be burned out and simply wished to be free to benefit from the FIRE way of life. Writing and tinkering 15 to twenty hours per week for mental stimulation and lunch cash beat grinding 15+ hours a day for years for the slim likelihood of an enormous exit value eight figures down the highway.
For a very long time that regarded like the appropriate alternative. Trip the bull market. Go on an journey. Discover new challenges. Be free. The factor is, I nonetheless discovered loads about scaling a enterprise like a VC-backed firm, simply within the stage and energy I wished.
Seventeen years later, I’ll have unintentionally constructed one factor that issues for surviving within the AI economic system. Not a product. Distribution.
Thought AI Was Going To Completely Crush This Web site
For all of 2025 and the primary quarter of 2026, I used to be feeling the top was close to for Monetary Samurai.
AI was scraping my content material and serving it up with no attribution. Search conduct was altering. Why click on by means of to a 1,500-word submit when a chatbot summarizes it in three bullets? I instructed my dad, “Nicely, it was enjoyable whereas it lasted.” He lamented with me.
Monetary Samurai is the sort of way of life enterprise AI threatens instantly. A legacy web site that wasn’t constructed by AI and principally depending on natural seek for progress. A sitting duck. Heck, even Google is cannibalizing its personal legacy search enterprise by revamping its search field with its AI software, Gemini.
Nonetheless, finally, I turned an AI maximalist. As a substitute of fearing it, I began investing in it aggressively beginning in early 2023. Conventional enterprise capital, public enterprise capital, and particular person checks into AI founders right here in San Francisco. After you have pores and skin within the sport, the worry turns into curiosity.
And someplace in there, the cloud lifted. I noticed Monetary Samurai has the 4 issues AI cannot scrape: authority, longevity, belief, and distribution.
Constructing Is Free Now. Distribution Is Extra Tough Than Ever.
This is what AI truly did. It did not kill content material. It killed the price of constructing.
Anybody can ship a product now. Spend per week with Claude Code and you will have an actual app. The barrier to constructing, which used to really feel troublesome, is mainly gone.
However here is the half no one warns you about: the barrier to getting customers was by no means the identical barrier. The 2 weren’t all the time linked. You simply could not inform, as a result of they each used to really feel unimaginable on the identical time.
I noticed a Reddit submit just lately that nailed it. A man constructed 4 iOS apps with Claude, 5 extra in progress. Actual apps. SwiftUI, StoreKit, widgets, the works. Whole income throughout all of them? Zero. Whole customers? His spouse, and one man in Finland he suspects downloaded it accidentally. Learn this:
Constructing was not his drawback. Demand was. And demand has by no means been extra aggressive. You’ll be able to create one thing good, but when no one is aware of it exists, you do not have a enterprise. You’ve gotten a pastime with a server invoice.
That is the nice inversion of the AI period. The factor that was onerous, constructing, is now straightforward. The factor that was discounted, distribution, is now an enormous a part of the sport. And distribution is strictly what cannot be vibe-coded in a weekend. It takes years.
Why Folks Really Learn Monetary Samurai
So why do a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals nonetheless present up right here each month, in a world drowning in AI-generated finance content material and TikTok movies?
A number of causes, and none of them are unintended.
Every part right here comes from first-hand expertise. I am not summarizing a research I skimmed. I am telling you what truly occurred after I engineered my very own layoff in 2012, or how I bought screwed by a life insurance coverage firm that attempted to jack my time period premium from $39 to $720 a month simply because I might visited a sleep middle. The wins and the errors, each.
I spent 10 years in finance earlier than I wrote a phrase right here, so I am not studying private finance in public. I lived it and proceed to stay it.
In 2009, I kickstarted the modern-day FIRE motion and have gone deep into investing matters to assist of us construct sufficient passive earnings to interrupt free from jobs they hate.
I do not want the earnings. Meaning I could be extra goal and write regardless of the heck I need. Being free to talk freely is great. Please do not cross me.
And I’ve proven up 3 times per week for 17 years with out fail. That is over 2,600 articles thus far. Belief is not a advertising tactic. It is a deposit you make each week for nearly twenty years, and you’ll’t faux the stability.
That’s the moat. Not the writing itself. The connection behind it.
Which Is Precisely Why I Make investments In Founders
This is the place it will get fascinating, and why I am penning this now as an AI maximalist.
I am an LP in enterprise funds and an energetic angel investor in AI startups. The longer I do that (since 2006), the extra satisfied I’m that I can add super worth to early-stage startups by means of my platform. Not solely can I interview founders on my podcast to inform their story, I can even write about their product and assist them acquire recognition and clients. Cash is probably the most commoditized factor in Silicon Valley. All people has cash.
What founders cannot simply entry is distribution. Belief with an actual viewers. Seventeen years of sample recognition on what makes folks truly purchase a product and keep it up, not simply join a free trial.
Once I again a founder, I am not wiring cash and disappearing, until you need me to. I can put your product in entrance of a giant, prosperous, high-intent viewers that has trusted me for nearly twenty years. I perceive buyer acquisition, retention, and storytelling.
The very best founders are knowledgeable builders. They’ve that dealt with. They want somebody who can resolve the issue that really kills most startups: no one comes.
So should you’re constructing one thing genuinely nice and also you’re staring down that precise drawback, I am most likely probably the most helpful verify in your cap desk.
You Cannot Fail If You By no means Give up
I am going to depart the founders and all readers with the one lesson 17 years has crushed into me.
Once I began Monetary Samurai in 2009, I promised myself I might publish 3 times per week for 10 years. I hit that purpose in July 2019, after which, like Forrest Gump, I simply stored operating. “Why cease if I can maintain going?” turned the mantra.
99% of the private finance websites that launched round after I did have shut down or offered. I am nonetheless right here. Not as a result of I am smarter, however as a result of I refused to give up. Moreover, who sells their child if they are not doing it for the cash? No one. Please say within the sport lengthy sufficient for compounding rewards to kind.
You’ll be able to by no means lose should you by no means hand over. Maintain discovering away across the inevitable partitions that kind alongside your journey.
Thank You For 17 Years So Far
Distribution is simply consistency plus time. There is not any shortcut, which is strictly why it is value a lot, and why it is best to cease delaying and begin as we speak.
As I shut out my seventeenth yr and head into my 18th this July 2026, thanks. For studying, for sharing, for the views you allow within the feedback, and for choosing up my books. I am excited to put in writing the subsequent chapter.
The entrepreneur’s journey is stuffed with ups and downs. The trick is not avoiding them. It is accepting them and appreciating each second alongside the best way.
And to the founders studying this who suppose I might be of use, be happy to e-mail me. Yow will discover my e-mail deal with on the backside of my About web page.
How has Monetary Samurai helped you in your monetary journey? What are a few of your favourite matters and articles through the years? In case you’re a enterprise proprietor, how do you see AI altering the panorama?
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