Back in 2012, the year I left banking and three years after I started Financial Samurai, I had a choice: run a lifestyle business or build a venture-backed company.
I chose the lifestyle business. After 13 years in equities I was burned out and just wanted to be free to enjoy the FIRE lifestyle. Writing and tinkering 15 to 20 hours a week for intellectual stimulation and lunch money beat grinding 15+ hours a day for years for the slim chance of a big exit worth eight figures down the road.
For a long time that looked like the right choice. Ride the bull market. Go on an adventure. Explore new challenges. Be free. The thing is, I still learned plenty about scaling a business like a VC-backed company, just in the level and effort I wanted.
Seventeen years later, I may have accidentally built one thing that matters for surviving in the AI economy. Not a product. Distribution.
Thought AI Was Going To Permanently Crush This Site
For all of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, I was feeling the end was near for Financial Samurai.
AI was scraping my content and serving it up with no attribution. Search behavior was changing. Why click through to a 1,500-word post when a chatbot summarizes it in three bullets? I told my dad, “Well, it was fun while it lasted.” He lamented with me.
Financial Samurai is the kind of lifestyle business AI threatens directly. A legacy site that wasn't built by AI and mostly dependent on organic search for growth. A sitting duck. Heck, even Google is cannibalizing its own legacy search business by revamping its search box with its AI tool, Gemini.
However, eventually, I became an AI maximalist. Instead of fearing it, I started investing in it aggressively starting in early 2023. Traditional venture capital, public venture capital, and individual checks into AI founders here in San Francisco. Once you have skin in the game, the fear turns into curiosity.
And somewhere in there, the cloud lifted. I realized Financial Samurai has the four things AI can't scrape: authority, longevity, trust, and distribution.
Building Is Free Now. Distribution Is More Difficult Than Ever.
Here's what AI actually did. It didn't kill content. It killed the cost of building.
Anyone can ship a product now. Spend a week with Claude Code and you'll have a real app. The barrier to building, which used to feel difficult, is basically gone.
But here's the part nobody warns you about: the barrier to getting users was never the same barrier. The two weren’t always connected. You just couldn't tell, because they both used to feel impossible at the same time.
I saw a Reddit post recently that nailed it. A guy built four iOS apps with Claude, five more in progress. Real apps. SwiftUI, StoreKit, widgets, the works. Total revenue across all of them? Zero. Total users? His wife, and one guy in Finland he suspects downloaded it by accident. Read this:
Building was not his problem. Demand was. And demand has never been more competitive. You can create something brilliant, but if nobody knows it exists, you don't have a business. You have a hobby with a server bill.
This is the great inversion of the AI era. The thing that used to be hard, building, is now easy. The thing that was discounted, distribution, is now a huge part of the game. And distribution is exactly what can't be vibe-coded in a weekend. It takes years.
Why People Actually Read Financial Samurai
So why do hundreds of thousands of people still show up here every month, in a world drowning in AI-generated finance content and TikTok videos?
A few reasons, and none of them are accidental.
Everything here comes from first-hand experience. I'm not summarizing a study I skimmed. I'm telling you what actually happened when I engineered my own layoff in 2012, or how I got screwed by a life insurance company that tried to jack my term premium from $39 to $720 a month just because I'd visited a sleep center. The wins and the mistakes, both.
I spent 10 years in finance before I wrote a word here, so I'm not learning personal finance in public. I lived it and continue to live it.
In 2009, I kickstarted the modern-day FIRE movement and have gone deep into investing topics to help folks build enough passive income to break free from jobs they hate.
I don't need the income. That means I can be more objective and write whatever the heck I want. Being free to speak freely is wonderful. Please don't cross me.
And I've shown up three times a week for 17 years without fail. That's over 2,600 articles so far. Trust isn't a marketing tactic. It's a deposit you make every week for almost two decades, and you can't fake the balance.
That is the moat. Not the writing itself. The relationship behind it.
Which Is Exactly Why I Invest In Founders
Here's where it gets interesting, and why I'm writing this now as an AI maximalist.
I'm an LP in venture funds and an active angel investor in AI startups. The longer I do this (since 2006), the more convinced I am that I can add tremendous value to early-stage startups through my platform. Not only can I interview founders on my podcast to tell their story, I can also write about their product and help them gain recognition and customers. Money is the most commoditized thing in Silicon Valley. Everybody has money.
What founders can't easily access is distribution. Trust with a real audience. Seventeen years of pattern recognition on what makes people actually buy a product and stick with it, not just sign up for a free trial.
When I back a founder, I'm not wiring money and disappearing, unless you want me to. I can put your product in front of a large, affluent, high-intent audience that has trusted me for almost two decades. I understand customer acquisition, retention, and storytelling.
The best founders are expert builders. They have that handled. They need someone who can solve the problem that actually kills most startups: nobody comes.
So if you're building something genuinely great and you're staring down that exact problem, I'm probably the most useful check on your cap table.
Related: YC Demo Day: The Quest To Invest In The Best Founders
You Can't Fail If You Never Quit
I'll leave the founders and all readers with the one lesson 17 years has beaten into me.
When I started Financial Samurai in 2009, I promised myself I'd publish three times a week for 10 years. I hit that goal in July 2019, and then, like Forrest Gump, I just kept running. “Why stop if I can keep going?” became the mantra.
99% of the personal finance sites that launched around when I did have shut down or sold. I'm still here. Not because I'm smarter, but because I refused to quit. Besides, who sells their baby if they aren't doing it for the money? Nobody. Please say in the game long enough for compounding rewards to form.
You can never lose if you never give up. Keep finding away around the inevitable walls that form along your journey.
Thank You For 17 Years So Far
Distribution is just consistency plus time. There's no shortcut, which is exactly why it's worth so much, and why you should stop delaying and start today.
As I close out my 17th year and head into my 18th this July 2026, thank you. For reading, for sharing, for the perspectives you leave in the comments, and for picking up my books. I'm excited to write the next chapter.
The entrepreneur's journey is full of ups and downs. The trick isn't avoiding them. It's accepting them and appreciating every moment along the way.
And to the founders reading this who think I'd be of use, feel free to e-mail me. You can find my e-mail address at the bottom of my About page.
How has Financial Samurai helped you on your financial journey? What are some of your favorite topics and articles over the years? If you're a business owner, how do you see AI changing the landscape?
Subscribe and Support
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Sam,
I don’t typically reach out to authors whose work I read online, but after following Financial Samurai for several years and reading your recent post on distribution as the last moat, I thought I’d send a brief note of appreciation.
While I may not fit the profile of your typical reader, much of what you write resonates with me. I retired earlier than most after a long career, though retirement has proven to be more of a transition into new pursuits than an ending. Yet I continue to find your writing thoughtful and useful because it goes beyond personal finance and often explores the broader questions that follow financial independence.
One point from your recent article particularly resonated with me: the importance of having the courage to pursue different avenues of growth and experience. Looking back, that willingness to embrace change shaped much of my own journey. Over the years, I’ve lived in seven cities across six states, changed industries multiple times, taken on progressively larger leadership responsibilities, led a company as CEO, founded and eventually sold a business, and later built a family investment firm. None of those moves—geographic or professional—were obvious at the outset, but each opened doors that would have remained closed had I chosen the safer path. Your observation about having the courage to try something new, whether a different career, venture, or city, struck a familiar chord.
What I’ve appreciated most about your writing is the combination of firsthand experience, intellectual curiosity, and willingness to share both successes and uncertainties. There are plenty of sites that focus on tactics. Far fewer explore what comes next—purpose, reinvention, entrepreneurship, family, investing, and the challenge of building a meaningful life after achieving financial security.
Your reference to ikigai also resonated with me. It remains a personal compass of sorts, though also an elusive one. I have many interests and pursuits that occupy my time, and only one that generates income through investment returns. I’ve come to realize that purpose is not always found in a single calling, but sometimes in the combination of pursuits that continue to challenge, engage, and energize us.
In any case, I simply wanted to thank you for the consistency and effort you’ve put into Financial Samurai over the years. Seventeen years of showing up, thinking, writing, and sharing is no small accomplishment. While we’ve never corresponded, your work has provided perspective and encouragement at several points along my own journey.
Wishing you continued success as you begin year eighteen.
Best regards,
Steve
Because of you, I got into Personal Capital and Fundrise. Apart from helping me validate some of my financial principles and behavior.
Same GRS! And, I’ve use the motivation to make a few larger financial decisions. I love this graphic of Ikigai!
I would had never learned about private equity without FS. I invested in Fundrise from Sam talking about it and happy I did after that VCX IPO. Thanks alot FS
Sam, congrats and keep up the great work!
Been reading and following your financial journey through Financial Samurai for years. I always appreciate your POV on the market, getting updates on the latest in SF, but most of all I appreciate you providing various frameworks for thinking about (and measuring) personal spending and investments.
Great article Sam,
It reminds me of my neighborhood growing up. I grew up in a normal middle class neighborhood on the poor side of town and people often talked down on us, that we would not be successful, blah, blah, blah, but technology changed our lives and made some of the kids from my neighborhood very rich.
The older generations looked down on kids who played video games and watched a lot of TV. Nowadays the video game players of our generation are world class surgeons and video game designers and YouTube stars. One of my neighbors made millions from a YouTube channel and another one of my neighbors became a COO of major regional fast food chain.
Technology helped a bunch of ordinary kids do extraordinary things and AI will do that for the next generation of workers too! I can’t wait to see what the kids do with this technology. It will definitely be some things that we could never have imagined just a few years ago.
This website is the best and Congrats on all of your success!
I invested about $10k in Fundrise venture fund a couple of years back you had mentioned. After it went public I more than 10x’d my investment. I have been reading your blog for over 10 years. Keep it going!
Congrats! Not a bad return indeed. I’m expecting it to trade around $40 a year post lockup. Let’s see what happens.
I also invested $10k in Fundrise and 10x’d my investment. Would love to hear the analysis about why you’re expecting it to drop two thirds from currently over $120 to $40! Is it just all the post-lockup sales?
$40 is my estimated NAV of VCX in September 2026.
If that is the NAV, then even a 2x or 3x premiums is still good for the initial investments.
As far as my love and passion for personal finance is concerned, much of it has been fueled by your many excellent articles over the years. I really appreciate your hard work, dedication and overall holistic approach to this wild and crazy world of personal finance!
Thanks Adam. I appreciate your comment and support.
Personal finance can be wild and crazy indeed, especially as our lives, get more complicated. There are so many things to talk about.
thank you Sam for writing and keeping on sharing throughout the years. I’m a two time founder in SF and have been reading your blog since 2015. Since then I’ve exited my first one and now building my next. Thanks to your perspectives, I gain confidence in navigating life milestones like having 2 kids, choosing next career bet etc. I’ve shared your blog with so many friends who are learning to plan their own finances, going through layoffs or building their families.
Happy anniversary and happy birthday!
Appreciate it MS! That is awesome. You are a two-time founder. I hope your first exit was for a big bucks. But even if it wasn’t, it’s so rewarding to create something from nothing and build your own baby into something strong. Congrats!
Congratulations on the anniversary and your birthday as well! I’ve been following you for years and I’m very grateful for the positive influence you’ve had on my investing. I always appreciate your insights and real-world experiences that help us make the best decisions for our financial future. All the best for another 17 years!
Thanks Alessandro! I’m not sure if I can make it for another 17 years, but I definitely plan to make it for at least another 12 years until my youngest goes to college. But I actually might need to make it 17 years, just in case she graduates and can’t find a job.
I have plenty for my kids to do when they are adult adults!
Thank you for sharing your life’s journey with us for all these years. Its your personal spin that has kept me reading and learning from you.
You’re welcome Terry. It’s been a rewarding journey. I hope yours has been as well.
Congratulations! Your books and blog have played a significant role in my investment journey, and I’m grateful for every article you share. Thank you for all the knowledge, insight, and inspiration you’ve provided over the years.
Thank you Tatiana!
Happy Birthday Sam,
I have been following your work since 2013 and have improved my financial outlook immensely. I have applied several of your principles and greatly appreciate your efforts to educate others. I know I have learned a lot. Hope your day is good.
Respectfully,
Martin
Thank you Martin! Today is a good day, despite having to drop off my car at the auto mechanic for the fourth business day. My wife went with me and we decided to go to the BMW dealer, drink some of their free coffee, eat at our favorite Thai restaurant, walk to the bookstore and check out some new books, and then actually test drive a new Range Rover sport 2026 to potentially replace the one that that’s in the shop. And then after that we went to the Japanese tea garden and picked up our kids at the park. It was a fulfilling and wonderful birthday.
A friend told me about you, so I used your “How to engineer your own layoff” to my advantage in 2019 and never looked back. I don’t always agree with your posts, but they often pique my curiosity. Thanks for sharing your journey and best wishes for the future. I always look forward to seeing your content in my email.
Congrats on engineering your layoff! And makes me so sad when people quit their jobs and walk away with tremendous amount of money on the table. I hope you are a new journey has been fulfilling!
Wow congrats on 17 years!! That’s incredible! I’ve been reading your articles pretty much since you started. And can happily say my financial journey has been successful so far thanks to your wisdom and advice. So thank you!
Thank you, Jaime for sticking with me all these years. I really appreciate it!
Congratulations for your longevity and being on the front end of a massive movement. I agree with your comments in today’s piece. Some “content providers” are posting but have never really done much professionally (some have) and it – to me at least – shows in the quality of product. Your are different in this regard.
What I like best is the attention to the higher end/more affluent reader. The vast majority of the PF content resides and speaks to households with a $2-4mm net worth. Ergo, the content becomes very repetitive in a hurry. Yours is different, your perspective is more thoughtful.
Thank you for all you do – Rock on!
Agreed and well said about Sam!
Thanks, Jim. There is so much interesting stuff that happens on one’s financial independence journey, that it’s fun and exciting to explore a new things. Maybe we should talk about dynasty trusts in the future.
Sam as someone 25 years older than you who has read their fair share of financial magazines, papers, blogs and so on, most of them now in the graveyard, what makes you stand out is your “voice”. By your words you garner trust, respect and understanding. I’ve lost count of the number of people who I’ve introduced to your site and wisdom. Thank you for all you’ve done and shared.
His “real life” experience helps all of us so much! His honesty and obviously his experience with markets, personal finance, etc., what a gift he’s been!
re: “what makes you stand out is your “voice”. By your words you garner trust, respect and understanding.”
My thoughts exactly. Never lose your perspective that makes you unique. Say what you want to say and let the chips fall where they may. Continue to be brave!
Will do! Thanks
Sarkis, i’m very thankful of your willingness to share my work. I appreciate it.
As a 74 year-old person, if you have some wisdom for me on what you would do for doing the age of 49 and 74, I’m all for it. If you had some things you did that were just absolutely Must dos, please let me know.
Every time I go through one anniversary or one birthday, I get a little bit sad because that’s just time. I’ll never get back. I am completely focusing on my health and well-being from now on. So important to stay alive until my kids are adult adults.
Sam I do have some advice that I can share with you. And thank you for asking. I’m from a culture that valued the wisdom of elders. No matter how well read and informed one is oftentimes the best lessons are learned from experiences – both good and bad. The years between 49 and 74 are potentially treacherous. You personally are way ahead of the pack firstly because it seems that you have a devoted life partner who loves you and your family, secondly because your finances are set and lastly because you are doing something that you love and helping so many others by your life’s work. Those assets must give you tremendous satisfaction. But deficiencies in those areas can lead to shipwrecks in the middle years. I was a physician and cared for thousands of patients and I saw firsthand the crises in those middle years-usually divorce but also job loss, health issues and a sense of meaninglessness. The two things I would prescribe were to work assiduously on developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle which you seem to be doing and secondly to develop one’s spiritual journey. I am a Christian but I won’t proselytize you, but I’ve seen firsthand in 21st America that there is a sense of despair that the pursuit of money and possessions cannot overcome. So to close take care of yourself physically and spiritually, make wonderful memories with your loved ones with travel and fun experiences and always keep learning. Most of us will not be able to forestall the frailties of aging and by about age 75 you definitely slow down physically. All best to you and yours. Sarkis.
Sam,
5 years ago I met a woman on a ski lift that was my alter-ego. Although she is 25 years younger we were like twins. We liked the same things, we were both in Finance and had almost everything thing in common although the odds said it shouldn’t be so. When she asked me where I get my Financial advice on line I said “Financial Samurai!” Of course, she said the same. That is when I knew you were the real deal. And word of mouth, in a conversation on a chair lift is something AI can never replicate. Congratulations and Happy Birthday!
re: “word of mouth, in a conversation on a chair lift is something AI can never replicate”
EXACTLY!
Thanks amazing Ed! Serendipity! I have those fun 6 to 7 minute conversations on the chairlift as well. But also in the Hot tub tub with other guests afterwards. Which resort did you guys go to?
Thank you, Sam for creating Financial Samurai to empower others with their personal finance journey and building the FIRE movement. I’m in the Bay Area also and found your content applicable for those living in high-cost coastal cities. I’ve been a long-time reader since 2016. I’ve purchased your books. Since then, you’ve helped me think and plan through life’s milestones: buying a car, buying a house, and having a child. Thank you and congrats on the upcoming 18th anniversary!
10 years is amazing Ron. Thanks for reading all these years. I wish you well and your family life and in your career. What an amazing time to be in the Bay Area right now. Lots of hope and lots of hesitation.
Dear Sam,
Thanks for writing all these years and not selling your site. It’s true, nobody sells their baby, and it is evident you write from the heart.
All those personal finance sites that just pump out listicle posts and affiliate posts one after another were obviously just writing content for the money. The stories you tell at different stages of life are what keep me coming back and sharing.
Love your books too!
Jennifer
(reader since 2014)
Thank you, Jennifer! I was approached to sell this site in the past. And it was an attractive figure. But I felt so bad to sell my baby just for money that I decided not to, and I’m glad.
It’s fun to have something to do and build upon something with so much longevity. And it gives my children something to see and maybe learn from an aspire to.
Sam,
I only found your newsletter about 5 years ago but have been reading it since. Your transparent and direct approach helped me retire May 6th and feel confident about doing so at 46 years old. I have taken several things from your newsletters and incorporated them into my FIRE plans. I appreciate your wins, losses and vulnerability with us readers. Keep up the great work.
Dan
Wonderful to hear Dan. Best of luck on your Financial journey!
Thank you Sam, I’ve been a reader for a long time and am really kicking myself for not taking your advice on the Venture Fund opportunity last year. Alas, solid financial advice aside, I read your newsletter because it’s always been very human and relatable. Two traits we need more of, not less, in this world!
Great post, Sam and thank you for all you’ve put into this site over the years. I discovered Financial Samurai around 2019 and have learned a great deal from you. It’s also been a fascinating window into life in a HCOL area and what finding meaning as an early retiree looks like from the inside.
Your point about distribution as the last moat really resonates. Authority and trust are built over years, not prompts, and you’ve built both.
I’m quietly building my own platform around FI, purpose, and meaning for midlife professionals, specifically around what I call FINE: Financial Independence, Next Endeavor. The idea that FI isn’t just an escape from work but a foundation for stepping toward work that actually matters. One post and one newsletter per week, building slowly and consistently.
Posts like this one encourage me to be patient since consistency over time is the only strategy that works.
Desert FI — DesertFI.org
Happy anniversary, Sam. Longtime faithful reader. I am in a different life stage than you, but I have learned from you through the years. We were able to retire with dignity in 2024. I hope you are able to help the AI companies.
Thank you! I have been reading for years! Your site has helped me in making some pretty big financial decisions. I respect the grind and the brutal honesty.