Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2015; MOGL is described as Carder’s current company and its impact as of that time, and the companies’ situation may have changed since.
Retiring young and rich is most people’s dream, or at least that’s what the finance gurus sell. The thing is, that mindset is at odds with itself, because whatever it is that makes you rich is precisely what will stop you from retiring young.
(Read: why don’t billionaires want to retire young and rich?)
That’s the case of Jon Carder, a young millionaire who retired when he was only 27.
He started his first company, BabysHeaven, while he was a university student of philosophy and art. The company sold baby products online. Within a few months the business was already profitable, and Carder decided to drop out of university at 22 to focus solely on it.
He sold that company for an undisclosed amount (a few thousand dollars) and used the money to create Client Shop, an online tool that helps people find the best mortgage loans.
Carder managed to grow this new company to a value of millions of dollars in its first year.
The young man says his mother couldn’t understand how her son was making so much money and even started to think he was involved in drugs, as he said in an interview with Business Insider.
But four years later he appeared on the cover of Fortune, having sold this company for $10 million, so we can assume his mother’s doubts were finally laid to rest.
In those four years Carder had earned the title of the fastest-growing company in San Diego for his firm, which by then had 100 employees.
See also: Niklas Zennström, the 2.0 entrepreneur: a lesson in persistence
After reaching $8.4 million in revenue, Carder decided to sell it quickly for $10 million.
Carder says he was an entrepreneur with a single purpose: to make a lot of money. Once he had achieved that, he felt he had accomplished his goal and was satisfied. He had reached the finish line, and so he now had enough money to enjoy life and never have to work again.
As he explains, his parents had struggled for money their whole lives, and the family never had much. In fact, when he started his first internet business he had to use a friend’s computer because he couldn’t afford to buy one. So when he made so much money, he thought it was time to retire and live his life.
Carder invited 10 of his friends on a trip to kick off and celebrate his retirement. They went surfing in Indonesia.
In his words, they had an epic time and he couldn’t have been happier. What he learned was that money can indeed buy happiness, but only a limited amount of it.
When the trip was over, Carder’s friends had to go back to work, so he carried on travelling the world, until the inevitable happened: boredom.
Carder started to feel terribly bored. He realised, he says, that being an entrepreneur can be very stressful and at times painful, but that doing something with a positive impact on people’s lives was far more satisfying than simply doing nothing.
At that point he understood that he had retired too early and that he had to learn to be happy and be an entrepreneur at the same time. He understood that it isn’t about money, but about having an impact on the world.
See also: If you want to retire with a million, this is how much you need to save at your age
So three weeks after retiring, while still in Indonesia, he bought a domain name for his third company: mojopages.com, a website where people could find local businesses such as plumbers, doctors, restaurants and so on.
But Carder didn’t do proper market research and overlooked the fact that this business idea already existed. As he admits, Mojopages.com was never going to have any positive impact; Yelp already did.
It was a small failure, and it didn’t stop Carder.
It wasn’t long before he created MOGL, an app that lets you earn rewards, including airline points and cash, which you can donate or keep, when you spend at thousands of restaurants, all without the hassle of coupons or loyalty cards.
Carder says that now is when he’s having a truly massive positive impact, and that if he had stayed retired he would have missed the chance to do so.
Personally, the line that stays with me is this one: money buys happiness, but only happiness for a limited time. In the end, it’s no cliché to say that it’s all about doing what you love every day, and, if possible, making money from it.
Further reading
- The guy who planned to retire at 27
- I got rich before 30 by selling my company, and being rich wasn’t what I expected
- 10 ways the rich think differently
- What’s the best way to make a million?
Featured image: Marvin Meyer marvelous, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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