Hey,
You're reading this because something about the premise caught your attention.
Good. That means you're probably the kind of person this newsletter is for.
Here's the setup.
I got laid off in March 2026. Eight years in operations at a company I won't name. One Tuesday morning, it was over. No drama, no warning. Just a meeting, a severance package, and a very quiet drive home.
I sat with the resume thing for about four days. Updated it, looked at job boards, had a few conversations. It felt like putting on a suit that didn't fit anymore.
So I stopped.
Instead, I asked a different question: what if I took the $1,000 sitting in a separate account and tried to build something real? Not a side project. Not a hobby. A business. With a hard deadline and real accountability.
Nine months. $1,000. Starting April 1.
The goal isn't just revenue. It's building something worth owning. An asset that compounds, that I can eventually sell or scale. The target is $1M in asset value by December 31, 2026.
I know how that sounds.
Here's what makes this different from every other "building in public" story you've seen:
I'm using AI as my co-strategist. Not just for writing. For research, for decision-making, for killing bad ideas before I spend a dollar on them. Every strategic call in this experiment runs through Claude first. I document the reasoning. You see all of it.
I'm staying anonymous. My name isn't Alex Reeves. That's a pen name. I have professional reasons for keeping my identity private that I won't get into. But I'll say this: the numbers are completely real. The Stripe screenshots are real. The subscriber counts are real. The failures are real.
I already killed six business ideas before choosing this one. A HIPAA compliance SaaS. An insurance agent tool. An AI governance consulting service. Each one died when the research said it should. I'll write about all of them.
The rules:
$1,000 total starting capital. Every dollar tracked publicly. Revenue gets reinvested at 30% back into growth. The rest accumulates.
One newsletter per week, every Saturday. No exceptions. If a week was bad, that issue is more interesting, not less.
Real numbers every month. Subscriber count, revenue by stream, expenses, net position. With receipts.
No fundraising. No co-founders. No team until the business pays for one.
What you'll get every Saturday:
An update on where the experiment stands. One deep tactical section covering the exact framework or decision process I used that week. One transparency moment with a real number or a real failure. One resource I actually used.
No filler. No inspiration. Just the mechanics of building something from nothing.
If that sounds useful, you're already subscribed or you wouldn't be reading this.
Forward it to one person who'd find it interesting. That's the only ask.
See you next Saturday.
Alex
Week 1 of 39. $11.28 spent. $988.72 remaining. 0 subscribers when I wrote this.