This seems like a huge humble brag. Guy graduates, makes a successful startup with his friend, lives on exotic beaches coding all day, sells the app for 6 figures, and in the end this is the second biggest regret of his life? Are you kidding me? Would really love to hear what his #1 regret is...
edit: the more I think about it the more I'm not buying this story.
By the time they left the accelerator (of course they were the #1 startup of the batch), they had a startup with an app that had traction, they had paying customers, they had thousands of downloads a day, and were pulling in at least $55k per year, revenue the author describes as "stable". The author claims at that point he was demotivated (why??) and decided to backpack across the world (which was funded by the app income, I would assume).
Then he gets a mysterious offer out of the blue from a faceless, nameless buyer, who the author never saw or even talked to personally even after the eventual sale. The buyer stays engaged for an entire year despite being ghosted in an attempt to buy this thing (because it's just that amazing?), and somehow the founders manage to talk him up to 2x the original offer! Afterwards, the app goes on to be a great success, and the author attributes that all to himself, and not anything the buyer did with the app ("The buyer is doing minimal updates, just enough to keep the app alive.")
I'm sorry but this whole story just seems fantastical. At every stage, the author paints himself in the best light possible, and everything good happens to him, despite this being a cautionary tale of woe and regret. Nothing bad happened in this whole story. Add to it the author offers no personal details in order to corroborate the story, and his entire online presence seems to be one of self-promotion, and I'm just not buying it. I mean, his pseudonym is "shadowy", which is pretty on the nose here.
edit: the more I think about it the more I'm not buying this story.
By the time they left the accelerator (of course they were the #1 startup of the batch), they had a startup with an app that had traction, they had paying customers, they had thousands of downloads a day, and were pulling in at least $55k per year, revenue the author describes as "stable". The author claims at that point he was demotivated (why??) and decided to backpack across the world (which was funded by the app income, I would assume).
Then he gets a mysterious offer out of the blue from a faceless, nameless buyer, who the author never saw or even talked to personally even after the eventual sale. The buyer stays engaged for an entire year despite being ghosted in an attempt to buy this thing (because it's just that amazing?), and somehow the founders manage to talk him up to 2x the original offer! Afterwards, the app goes on to be a great success, and the author attributes that all to himself, and not anything the buyer did with the app ("The buyer is doing minimal updates, just enough to keep the app alive.")
I'm sorry but this whole story just seems fantastical. At every stage, the author paints himself in the best light possible, and everything good happens to him, despite this being a cautionary tale of woe and regret. Nothing bad happened in this whole story. Add to it the author offers no personal details in order to corroborate the story, and his entire online presence seems to be one of self-promotion, and I'm just not buying it. I mean, his pseudonym is "shadowy", which is pretty on the nose here.