Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer

Freelance millionaire • Freelancing since 2021
Top Rated Plus @Upwork • Software architect
Freelance tips, personal finance, AI

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

$400K milestone on Upwork!

Half a million next.

How?

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@AnthonyCJames Me too!

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@Upwork you should do this.

[Iman Gadzhi @GadzhiIman]

We’re starting to ship out Whop plaques very soon!

$1M lifetime.

$10M lifetime.

$100M lifetime, coming soon.

Message your account manager & we’ll send them out shortly once you’re approved.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

Only Google and Nvidia outperformed S&P 500.

If you invested in any other Mag 7 you underperformed.

That's why I invest in index funds.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@nic_amadio Zurich for family life? Maybe if you're rich, but so boring environment for growing up

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@marclou They never stop because they can work what ever they want.

It is freedom indeed.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

Freelancing comes with a cost.

Burnout.

- Positive review pressure
- Constant overdelivering
- Unstable income
- 24/7 availability

That's why top freelancers move to running businesses, social media and investing.

Including me.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

Venezuela situation.

That's why I think you should always keep some BTC in self custody.

Especially if you are not in the first world country.

You never know.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

I am not invested in any freelance platform.

Why?

It doubles my risk.

Same as if I would buy the shares of the company I work for.

Diversify.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

Tech crisis is coming.

That was my thought while I was freelancing hard.

And the fear from it made me start investing.

Now, I'm so grateful that I've reached FI, especially because of AI threatening tech jobs.

The fear can be a great motivator.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@wander_investor Someone is going to work in McDonald's soon

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@jitsen4785 I think it's just wired in my head by boomers. By default my brain thinks that, but when I do the numbers - common sense decides otherwise

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

Real estate is not a good investment.

It is so hard to sink in my brain.

I'm wired to think that's the go to investment.

But when I do the numbers:
Long term it underperforms the stock market.

Not to mention - repairs, tenants, idle time.

Just do the numbers.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@abhishekgawade_ Yeah, yields in Europe are ~5%. You can get that passively risk free with bonds nowadays. Not to mention stocks

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

A guy working online solo on his laptop casually buys $1M of Google stock.

It makes a small % of his portfolio.

That's the world we live in right now.

If I would start working remotely today this would be highly motivating.

It still is.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

So I bought over $1M in Google today

Kinda crazy but also not so crazy

I've been the biggest Google hater for years, it was completely mismanaged, destroyed by politics and lack of any leadership, fumbled inventing Transformers etc.

Then Sergey returned and suddenly Google is dominating not just in the AI benchmarks and leaderboards but in real usage

AI benchmarks can and are easily rigged

But me running an AI startup and always wanting to use the best models makes me conclude something basic now: it's really just Google and Elon Musk and the Chinese in the end who will probably win

The models I use are all by either Google, xAI, or the Chinese (ByteDance, Kling, Minimax)

As you know Google now has its own chips (TPUs), Google has the biggest data set in video (YouTube), images (Google images) and generally the web (for LLMs), still the one of the biggest general user bases (Google Search etc), and they finally have a real engineer being the de facto CEO now (Sergey Brin)

Elon Musk with xAI you can't bet against cause he simply has the sheer willpower to get things done

The Chinese are similar, sheer willpower and they don't sleep and they really want to win, and companies like ByteDance (TikTok) have massive data sets in video too of course

In my opinion everyone is still staring too much at LLMs, I've always been more interested in image models, video models and now the nascent 3d and world models, that's where it's going and where we'll be able to prompt entire worlds or apps or whatever, it's hard to imagine WHAT exactly

With my app Photo AI I try be a little part of that journey there of course

Now I can't invest in xAI, I'm a bit invested in the Chinese via the ICHN ETF, but of course Google anyone can invest in and so I think I should

I've reduced my Nvidia investments already months ago, as it was inevitable there'd be real competitors to their chips at some point, with Google's TPUs there are now

I'm not an expert, and you should mostly just buy ETFs, and you shouldn't listen to me and this is not financial advice

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@levelsio What is the second broker you use?

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

The biggest secret in investment banking:

S&P500 outperforms 95% of active traders or funds.

5% odds is not the game I'm playing.

No charts, day trading, speculation.

Earn salary -> Buy low cost ETF

100% long term win ratio.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@itsolelehmann Startup ecosystem and nice weather rarely go hand in hand in Europe. I'd pick Barcelona if these are the metrics

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

This is my philosophy too.

My main source of income is freelancing.

If it dries up or I don't want it anymore, I'd be fine from ETFs, stocks, real estate income.

Then you move on and do something else or you do nothing and enjoy the retirement.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

One of the main things I learnt from the fall of the Spanish and Portuguese empires is that they both never re-invested their wealth

They instead built gold plated palaces (see the one in Mafra full of Brazilian gold) and other types opulence

And they thought the colonies would remain forever so they were fully dependent on the wealth from there (sugar, gold, silver, coffee)

But once they became independent, they lost a large share of their GDP overnight, Portugal lost about 80% of their income after Brazil went independent in 1822!

If they would instead have re-invested the wealth, they could have developed industry and new businesses but they became resource dependent instead

One interesting thing about the relatively young states of UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia is that they do exactly that. UAE and Qatar heavily invest their oil money to become destinations to live and Saudi Arabia is one of the top investors in tech startups worldwide

On a personal level I also learnt from this to do the same, don't waste the money you made on assets that don't return (like cars, boats, general opulence)

Instead try to re-invest most of it so you get income from new sources so that if the income sources that made you the wealth (for me my startups) eventually dry up (almost guaranteed in business, see the business or "product life cycle") you have already switched to the new industry

I personally do that through ETFs, stocks, real estate and a little bit of startup investing

So yes don't be like the Spanish or Portuguese empire 👌

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

This is huge.

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: Financial giant 'Interactive Brokers' to allow brokerage accounts to be funded by crypto stablecoins.

[Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer @topdevfreelance]

@AnthonyCJames Good catch