I put $10 million on my profile a month ago. I got there by taking three million plus in cumulative revenue over three years and applying a 3-4x multiple. That was my shortcut, not a defensible net-worth calculation: cumulative revenue is not an established annual valuation base, and company value is not my equity after liabilities.
Editorial update, October 11, 2026: Investor.gov defines net worth as assets minus liabilities. My original profile calculation used cumulative revenue and did not establish an equity value or reconcile liabilities. The underlying balance sheet, valuation evidence and bank/expense records are unavailable here. The author-confirmed chronology is a December 2025 sunset decision, a June 2026 pivot and a two-year customer transition; the app remains online.
I cringe at it now.
I watched a founder claim a $35 million valuation based on a $1 million seed round.
I had not independently valued that equity. A financing valuation is a transaction term, not proof of what an owner could realize after debt, dilution, tax and sale costs.
By December 2025, advances in coding agents made me question how much of my own business value I had assumed would last. They did not prove that another founder's company was worthless.
I could do the same thing with what I built. I could say SimpleDirect was worth millions. I could take that number into conversations to seem bigger. I had done it myself.
But I decided to sunset the old SaaS direction. I turned off auto-renewals and emailed customers manually. I restructured the work into something I could run. That did not mean every customer service had ceased, and the $10 million profile number no longer described something I could justify.
So I stopped.
The Five Things That Actually Matter
What actually matters? I've narrowed it down to five things, and net worth isn't one of them.
Cashflow, Skills, Health, Relationships
First: low expenses.
Reducing expenses is one lever I can work on. It is not entirely under anyone's control, and it is different from what a buyer might pay for a business.
You can't control whether AI makes your service irrelevant. You can't control what customers decide they want to pay.
I can look for expenses I can change while accounting for commitments I still have to meet.
For the last month, I've been obsessed with this number.
If expenses stayed at $15,000 a month, $500,000 of available cash would cover about 33.3 months with no new receipts. That is a fixed-expense scenario before taxes, debts, emergencies or changes in spending—not a guaranteed personal runway.
Second: cashflow.
Not just growth or booked revenue. Cashflow means cash coming in and going out; what remains after the relevant payments is different from a gross receipt hitting my account on Friday.
SimpleDirect and our other businesses were doing real revenue. But cashflow was always messier than the top line suggested.
Margins looked good on a spreadsheet. In reality, I was managing customer refunds, payment timing, and a hundred small leaks.
The revenue number felt impressive. The cashflow number was what actually paid the bills.
Third: long-term skills.
What can I do that someone else can't automate away in six months? For me, that's understanding capital structures, positioning, and what founders are actually thinking when they make decisions.
I want to keep developing that judgment. I cannot assume those skills will never be automated or lose market value.
Fourth: health.
Four to five times a week I move my body. I sleep when I can. I take the medication I need.
A $10 million net worth is worth nothing if your nervous system is fried and you can't think clearly.
I've seen founders with huge valuations on paper who were completely broken. The net worth didn't save them.
Fifth: relationships.
The people who know what you're actually thinking. The people who tell you when you're lying to yourself.
The people who stick around when the number on your profile drops. That's the only wealth that compounds.
Valuations Are Hostages
Lists of impressive valuations now make me ask what is realizable. I have not supplied a company-by-company analysis of the Forbes list that would show most of those valuations are gone.
Defending my own profile number was already a distraction from running the business.
AI competition can pressure a SaaS business. It does not make a quoted $50 million company worth zero overnight by definition; revenue, obligations, customer relationships and buyer interest still need examination.
That uncertainty is why I want less of my identity tied to a company valuation.
Net worth is the value of assets minus liabilities. An estimated private-company interest may be one asset, with valuation and liquidity uncertainty; it is not the whole statement.
Tomorrow it could be worth half that. Next month it could be worth nothing. You can't eat a valuation. You can't live on it.
What I Actually Have
In this February account, I described about $15,000 a month in consulting revenue and a roughly 33-month cash scenario. Those historical figures are not a current service offer, a full personal balance sheet or an independently reconciled cashflow statement.
That's not worth $10 million. It's worth everything to me, because it's real.
Backing Away
The insidious thing about net worth metrics is that they let you lie to yourself in public.
You put a number on your LinkedIn and it becomes real to everyone except you. You know it's bullshit. But you defend it anyway because once you wrote it down, backing away feels like failure.
So I'm backing away. The $10 million is off my profile. What I'm focused on now is smaller and uglier but true: how do I stay alive, stay sharp, and stay independent?
Those three things don't make it onto a Forbes list. But they're the only three things that matter when the game resets.
You are the asset. Not your company's valuation. Not your net worth. You. What you can think. What you can do. Who trusts you. Those things are the only numbers that actually mean anything.
Everything else is infrastructure waiting to be disrupted.