From my own experience..

From the start, I was driven by the desire to be financially independent and not to have to work for someone else. I detested wasting my time doing someone else's work. I always saw a better way of doing things (from my perspective). I wanted to lead my own life, doing what I chose to do. I absolutely had to make enough money to be financially independent or .... well there was no other option.

I worked out, that to do what I wanted, when I wanted, for the rest of my life, that you needed a good lump of cash, that after tax that you could put in a low risk investment (4% sounded reasonable from my research).

That rate of return would keep the principal in line with inflation and pay me a good salary. A minimum of $200k a year (increasing with inflation) for life sounded like a comfortable salary. My math worked out that I needed a minimum of $10M after tax. I never intended to spend any of the principle, but to save that for other projects later in my life. I now had the target firmly in my sights.

Now, how do you go about getting that kind of money? Forget about expecting a job to make you enough, its unlikely to happen while you're working for someone else. Sure, some lucky people choose a cool startup that hits it big, but the realistic odds of doing that (and owning enough stock) are like winning the lottery.

Use a job to fund the development of your own idea..

The only people I could find that made the amount of money I wanted, did it by creating a key technology that large companies need to use, and then they sold it to the highest bidder. I regularly saw deals going between $30M and $200M in Silicon Valley, as companies acquired small startups for their tech and/or business.

Creating products that sell directly to the public are much more likely to fail. Selling to big corporations is much easier. They are desperate for solutions, and have a ton of money to spend. Instead of finding a million customers to make it big, you only need one big corporation to make the same money.

First of all, you need to be where other people with your skill set are making the kind of money you want. For me, since I'm a tech nerd that meant Silicon Valley, CA or nothing. Sure, there is tech centers in other areas, but they are are all just supporting Silicon Valley, all the big deals are done there. The odds of making it work elsewhere are dramatically lower.

"The glass is half full in California, half empty everywhere else".

Doing business in the USA is so much easier than anywhere else in the world. People are so optimistic, that its possible to find backing for pretty much any idea, as long as you pitch it right. If you have had a successful business anywhere else in the world, you will find it takes half the effort to make twice the money in the USA, especially California.

Start by getting a job for a company that does business in the area you are skilled at. You will need the right education and skills. Big or small company, it doesn't matter. Just ensure its in hi-beta growth phase, ie its in the markets that are currently hot and stock prices are soaring. This is where all the M&A activity is, meaning it's going to be very easy to sell your company at a big profit.

Start by seeing where your company's customers are spending money and what they want. Its easy to find out, just by being a good listening employee. Read company filings and reports, know how the business works, find out what competitors are doing. Imagine it's your company and your profits at stake.

Identify a hole in the market you are working in that needs filling, based on what you hear customers say and what tech support people complain about.

It's easy to find a solution, as companies grow they become more and more inflexible and creating new technology becomes extremely difficult and expensive due to bureaucracy and communication problems. They no longer can be laser focused like when they were a startup. This is where you come in.

Create a solution that fills a needed gap and see if it works for you at your job to solve the problem.

Like any startup, be sure to maintain stealth mode at all times and keep your mouth shut. Do development work with your own tools and on your own time. Document everything with a daily activity log. If you run into problems later, you can show your exact steps.

If you see a demand for your solution or it solves a key problem, you could be on to a winner, you now need to ensure you own it. Start by creating a sole proprietorship in CA, it costs about $40 and 1 days work, and you are in business. You don't need a Corporation or LLC, which is just unnecessarily complicated, and also allows you to easily take on partners, which is fatal. Owning 100% is key to my system.

Over the years you will be tempted and/or convinced that you need to partner with or hand out equity to someone. No one else will have the passion and drive you have, and will likely quit or lose interest, but your equity will be lost forever. If you really need someones help, consider paying them or even ask them to do it for free! The internet has virtually all the info you want these days. Look at Quora!.

Document your idea and the steps involved in creating it. In California, even if you are working for someone else, it doesn't matter. If you come up with an idea on your own time and use your own tools, you own it 100%. Other countries and states have different laws, but hopefully CA is where you decided to set up business.

If you cant get to California, consider that thousands of immigrants from around the world come here by whatever means it takes. They want to be here so bad they will work as laborers in construction, gardening and cleaning in order to get a better life. If you're not willing to sacrifice at that level, you probably don't want it enough and should go with a regular career. Think about that.

If your not a US citizen or green card holder, the easiest way to get to the USA is via an L1 visa. The standard H1 visa is much harder to get.

To get an L1 visa and green card, start working for a US based company that has offices in your home country or anywhere you can get a visa.

If you are successful at the company, you will be soon travelling to their HQ in the USA for business meetings etc. Make new contacts in the US office, let them know you would love to move, and your ready! Its is then a simple procedure to relocate to the US and take on a new job with the same company. Once you have your green card (takes 1-3) years) you can quit and work for anyone in the USA. This all assumes you have the smarts and the education necessary. There are US based company offices all over the world, start looking around, you may have to take a job that isn't your first choice, but keep the big picture in mind.

Now its time to approach your Company lawyer (look him up in public filings) and get him to write you an official letter stating and recognizing you have your own company and you have developed your own technology and that you own it outright. It sounds impossible, but in my case, he was truly excited for me and wished me well. This official documentation is your key to future goals.

You can now turn to the company you work for and officially tell them about what you do. If your idea truly has benefit for their customers and integrates with their existing solution, you will find it easy to do business.

Then as you gain momentum, try tradeshows, small ads, friends, old customers to find new companies to use your solution. I really liked small focused tradeshows. They cost only a few thousand dollars to attend and you typically get a small table/booth, and get you exposure to all the big clients. Also, those tradeshows are the talent pools for future stars, and many biz dev VP's from big companies visit tradeshows looking for cool solutions to buy while they are still low cost.

Listen to peoples feedback, hone your solution, try different approaches and go with what the markets needs. It's an iterative process that takes time. It does not happen overnight.

OK, now you have something that people are willing to pay money for and you own it outright. You're 50% of the way. You don't have any debt, you don't have any partners and you still have your job. At this stage I was down to working part time for my old job, above 20hrs a week I was still considered full-time (my old companies policy at the time) and still gave me medical benefits and my 401(k).

At this stage you will start to get the attention of many other entrepreneurs and maybe the odd VC, people can start to smell the opportunity. What ever you do, do not take on partners or investors at this stage. Listen to them, get them excited, hear offers, but wait, better deals will come later.

The sweet spot is if you can show 3-4 paying customers, The bigger the business buying your solution, the better. Selling to fortune 500 corporations was not difficult. As close to $1M in yearly revenue or better is perfect. That's not profit, but revenue.

Potential buyers will see you, an individual, with this cool tech making the revenue that you did in your last year and scale this to their size of business. 10x - 100x your last years revenue is easily possible as a buying price. This will come as a combo of stock/cash and a 3 year contract working for them.

You are now ready for an exit. It took me 10 years to get to this stage. I attended many tradeshows, had a dozen customers, spoke with countless potential partners and entertained all sorts of deals and offers. I did not owe any money, in fact I was making good money from my consulting jobs and sales. It was occasionally scary, and I thought about packing it in a few times, but at the end of the day it all worked out. I made far more money than I had originally planned for and I felt totally in control.

There are 3 exit strategies that I tried. All of them worked out. Each one better than the last.

1) License your idea to another company, you can do this many times.

2) Partner with a much bigger startup, they pay you cash and stock.

3) Get bought outright by a big company, maybe a publicly traded multinational.

All 3 deals above will be available to you at this juncture. You will be a popular person with the VC's, and it will be a dream acquisition deal as your company only has one simple owner (you) and shows clear IP ownership. Most importantly you will not need to sell for billions of dollars as its only you getting the money, your not sharing it with dozens of other owners and investors.

All this info above assumes you are smart, have talent to make products and have the drive to keep going when other quit. You need to be a salesman, artist and an engineer, totally believe in yourself and your solution.

It also assumes your idea is truly a good one and people are willing to pay for it. All my approach does is ensure you make money out of it, and don't give it away or lose it like the other 99% do.

There is no magic it to it, I see this approach and ones with slight differences making it big every week here in Silicon Valley.

The keys are - doing all the work yourself and showing clear ownership..

I found time to do the above steps, and raise my family, and have enough free time for vacations and friends. You need to think smart, do the research and necessary work to get what you want. And know what you want! Write it down, and how you intend to get there.

Don't be a fool and quit your job, the correct job will expose you to the businesses that will eventually buy you out. It will also show you and train you how to make something that they will want to buy. So many people fail by borrowing money or using savings to start a business, rent an office, hire people etc. This only gives your 1-2 years at most to make it big before you run out of cash. It takes much longer than that to learn what people want, make the right contacts to make a real business that can be sold for the type of money you want to make.

Too many VC's and partners in your company and associated IP issues can mean a $100M buyout deal ends up making you enough money to buy a car. I cannot emphasize this enough. I see it all the time.

Before you dismiss this as un-achievable, take into consideration that I'm not a US citizen (green card), I had a second rate education, and had no money when I arrived in the USA. I was however totally confident that I would be successful.

I hope someone else can take this knowledge of my experience and get out the rat race. Retiring young really is as good as you hoped. Not working, is like living until you are 200 years old. You can do what you want every day, not just the weekends. You will have 7 days a week to enjoy, and the money to do whatever you want. Don't give up on your dreams. Do something proactive about it, or if you can't, change your expectations of life.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. I want to see more people do the same. If I can do it, so can you..