predicting your and your startups future is ridiculously difficult. at least for me (I will not promote)

2006: thought I‘d become a neuroscientist, doctor or software engineer 2008: studied economics and thought I‘d become a quant/consultant/banker 2010: barely attended class as I grinded HU Online Poker from $50 -> $100k and thought I‘d be a millionaire in my 20s 2011: FullTilt Black Friday and thought online poker is dead (sooo wrong in hindsight) 2012: Joined Tesla 2012 to help sell the Roadster in Munich and thought I‘d be supporting the EV mission the next 10yrs Tesla had no job extension for me (broke my heart). Joined Wayfair in Berlin and hunted across furniture trade shows to persuade manufacturers to sell online. 2015: declined an offer from Amazon in Munich and thought we stay in Berlin 2016: accepted an offer from Ricardo (eBay of Switzerland) and relocated to Switzerland 2019: wrote off my remaining $50k in Tesla stock and thought at least I supported a mission I love 2020: promoted to Chief Commercial Officer at Ricardo and thought I might have a chance to lead it one day 2021: $50k in Tesla turned into $ 4M+ on paper, quit Ricardo, hedged portfolio buying physical metals, $/€/CHF and 1yr deep OOM puts on QQQ and thought I‘m financially free for life 2022: „I‘m born for this and will hit $ 10M+ by end of the year“ as my QQQ puts went bananas | Dec: portfolio -50% YoY as puts expired worthless and largest positions: Tesla/BTC down 75% 2023: after trying 1.5 yrs to get a second child we decided to just be happy with one. 2nd child born at the end of 2023 2024 (Auction)Shack launched with basically zero usage. Thought it‘s over before it started 2025: largest Swiss newspaper reported on Shack, we hit rank 1 on the iOS charts in Switzerland, expanding to other countries and thought we‘d be at $100M val in no time (having awesome funding available to build the most value for regular sellers). 2026: banging my head against walls to close institutional funding at $4M val and thinking: what does the pattern have in store for 2027 bottom line: I‘ve been incredibly lucky and predictions (even about one’s own future) are not trivial