MidReal Story
Rags to Riches: The Billionaire's Journey
Scenario: Un jeune entrepreneur qui galérait à s'en sortir dans sont business depuis l'homme le plus riche du monde 5 ans apres
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Pacing back and forth in my office, I couldn’t help but think how much my life had changed over the past few months.
I was once a hopeful entrepreneur, but now I was on the brink of desperation.
With my app company starting to fail, our main investor had backed out—leaving us with only a few thousand dollars left in our bank account.
And to make matters worse, our clients were dropping us like flies…
I knew that if I didn’t get another investor soon, my business would be doomed.
So, I decided to start a new project—a new app—that I could use to get the money I needed to save my company.
And I threw everything I had into it: all of my energy, all of my time, and even all of my savings.
I was so broke that I couldn’t afford to pay for help, so I had to figure out how to build the entire app on my own.
I remember that first night—I spent hours watching YouTube tutorials on how to code and build an app.
And after three months of working non-stop, I finally had a beta version of my new app.
The meeting with my last potential investor was scheduled for today—and I knew that if I was going to get the money I needed, everything had to go perfectly.
But as soon as I woke up, the day started going downhill…
I spilled coffee all over myself while I was rushing out the door.
Then, since I barely got any sleep the night before, I slept through my alarm and woke up an hour late.
Which meant that I had to rush through the entire day without having time to prepare for my meeting.
But things went from bad to worse when I was finally in front of my potential investor.
As soon as I pulled up my beta version of the app on my laptop, it crashed.
It took me a few minutes to realize what happened, but when I finally did, I could feel my stomach drop as I stared at the blank screen.
As if it were mocking me, it flashed an error message:
A Fatal Exception Has Occurred
I’m not sure how long I sat in front of my laptop that day.
I just stared at the blank screen and thought about what this meant for me and my business.
The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t go back into work…
So I left—alone.
And as I sat in my car in our office’s parking lot, I couldn’t help but think about how many people would see me and assume that I had just been fired.
The truth was, I had just lost everything that I had worked so hard for over these past few years.
But that’s what most people don’t understand about entrepreneurship: We don’t do this because it’s easy.
We do this because we have no other choice.
I walked back into my office and immediately sunk into my chair.
The weight of my failure felt like it was suffocating me.
And with no one there to break up the deafening silence of my empty office, I couldn’t help but feel a wave of loneliness wash over me.
I knew that I should call someone—from my parents to one of my best friends—but I didn’t know if I could bring myself to tell them what happened.
So instead, I sat there in silence and thought about how I was going to tell all of my employees that we were closing up shop.
How was I going to look them in the eye and tell them that I had failed them?
That their paychecks were going to stop coming because of something that was completely out of their control?
But as I sat there trying to figure out how to solve this impossible puzzle, my phone started ringing—it was my financial advisor.
“Hey Alex,” he said once he picked up the phone.
I could hear the fear in his voice.
“We’re looking at running out of money by the end of next week.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
I closed my eyes and rubbed them with my hands.
“Honestly, I don’t see a way out of this.
It looks like bankruptcy is inevitable.”
“Yeah,” he said.
His voice was shaking.
I could tell how hard it was for him to say the words.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, and then he said, “I’m sorry, man.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
Then, after a few more moments of silence, we hung up.
I sat there staring at my phone for what felt like hours before I finally got up and walked over to his office.
We talked for a while, but it didn’t change anything.
My company was dead in the water.
I had nothing left to give it, and there was no way any investors would want to try and pick up the pieces now.
So instead, we talked about my options.
Which felt more like him telling me what to do than anything else.
And when it was all said and done, he slid a piece of paper across the table to me.
It was a contract stating that I was selling him everything that was left of my company: our office building, our assets, our clients, everything.
I read through the contract one more time, and then I looked up at him.
He returned my gaze and smiled—though it was tight and forced.
“It’s the best option you have,” he said.
I knew that he was right.
But that didn’t change the fact that signing my name on the dotted line felt like an admission of defeat.
And as soon as the pen left the paper, and the ink settled into the page, there was no turning back.
I gave him a weak smile of my own and then got up to leave.
As soon as we signed over the rights to my company to him today, he told me that he was closing up shop, and we were all out of jobs.
So now, as the day was ending and the sun was starting to go down outside my window, I had no choice but to pack up my things and leave.
And as I walked out of the office building with a box of my belongings in my hands, my eyes roamed over every nook and cranny of the building that had once been mine.
That had once been my pride and joy.
But all I could see was a ghost town.
There was a part of me that wanted to just leave.
To not have to face them, and tell them that I’d run my company into the ground and they were all out of jobs.
But I knew that wasn’t an option.
I had to see this through until the end.
So, I went back inside, and I walked past all of their offices, knocking on each one in turn, asking them all to gather in the conference room.
They’d all been so happy when they’d come into work that morning, looking forward to a day that was supposed to be about celebrating our company’s success.
I think that they were all expecting me to be hungover or something like that—especially after everything that had happened last night.
But, as soon as they’d seen the look on my face, their smiles had faded, and they’d turned into worried frowns instead.
And honestly, I didn’t know which was worse.
The thought of them finding out what was really going on today was hanging over me like a dark cloud, and I hated it.
I hated that I had to do this.
And I knew that the guilt was only going to get worse from here.
It was already clawing at my insides, and I hadn’t even told them what was happening yet.
I’d been so sure that I was going to succeed.
I’d been so sure that everything was going to work out in the end.
But I’d been wrong.
There were a lot of things that I could be accused of right now, but being wrong wasn’t one of them.
It just made me wish that there was some way that I could take it all back.
But I knew that there wasn’t.
And as soon as they all sat down around the table, I realized that there was no way that I could put this off any longer.
I took a deep breath and then turned to face them.
“I—” I started, but then I cleared my throat and tried again.
“I just wanted to say thank you all for everything that you’ve done for me over the years.I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without you.”
“What do you mean?”
Jonathan asked from his spot at the front of the room.
And I could tell from the look on his face that he already knew what was coming.
But denial was easier than acceptance.
So, he asked the question anyway.
But even though he was trying not to, he looked scared.
“It’s over,” I repeated.
“We’re bankrupt.”
“But—” Someone else started, but then they cut themselves off as soon as they realized what they were about to say.
“You can’t be serious,” he said, shaking his head.
But when he looked into my eyes, he knew that there was nothing that I could say right now that would change anything.
And as soon as it sunk in, he got angry instead.
“You were supposed to fix this!”
he yelled at me, standing up so fast that his chair toppled over behind him.
“Do you realize what this means?Do you realize what you’re going to do to us?”
he said, slamming his hands down on the table in front of him with a loud bang.
And I knew that he was right to be angry, but I still hated seeing him like this.
He’d all been so happy, just a few minutes ago, and now I’d gone and ruined everything.
And I didn’t know how to fix that either.
“Please, sit down,” I said, and I tried to sound as calm as I could, even though my heart was racing in my chest and my mouth had gone dry again.I knew that there was nothing that I could say to convince him that I hadn’t done this on purpose, but I tried anyway.“I wasn’t lying when I said that I’d done everything that I could to try and get us out of this mess,” I explained, trying to keep my voice steady, even though I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.“We just— It didn’t work.”
“So, now what?”
someone else asked, and I could hear the fear in their voice too.
“What are we supposed to do?
We can’t just leave here with nothing!
This is our lives you’re talking about!”
“I know,” I said, nodding, even though it felt like a lie.
And I wished that there was something more that I could do for them.
But this was the best that I could offer right now.
“This doesn’t have to be the end,” I said.
“If you want to stay in the tech industry—I can write you all reference letters.So that you—”
“Fuck your references!”
someone else yelled.
Their name was on the door of the office next to mine.
And they’d been there since just a few days after I’d started the company all those years ago.
And even though they were younger than me, they were one of the best programmers that I’d ever met.
They’d turned down job offers from some of the top companies in the country just so they could work here instead.
Because they’d believed in me.
And now that belief had been torn apart.
“I can’t pay my mortgage with a fucking reference!”
he yelled, his face going red.
“I put everything into this company!Everything!And this is how you repay me?By telling us to pack up our shit and leave?”
And he wasn’t wrong either.
None of them were.
But there was nothing that I could say right now that would change anything.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice broke as soon as the words left my mouth.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
And then, for a long time after that, nobody said anything at all.
Once the meeting was over, I went around to each of their offices, one by one, to talk to them about what was going to happen next.
Some of them were crying, and some of them were too angry to look me in the eye.
And some of them just wanted to know why this had happened at all.
But no matter what they said, the only thing that I could give them was my apologies and my explanations.
And as soon as the meeting was over, and all of the desks in the office were packed up into boxes, and everyone had driven away for the last time, I went back to my office and pulled open my drawer to get out another bottle of whiskey.
They were all gone now, and all that was left was the hollow emptiness of the room around me.
I’d gotten pretty used to being alone in the office over the past few months.
Whenever anyone had asked me about it, I’d just told them that I’d been working late or coming in early or something like that.
But the truth was that nobody wanted to come in here anymore because they’d known what was happening and they didn’t want to have to face it again.
So while the last person who’d worked with me had kept up some pretense of actually working in the office before I came along and told them what was happening in a meeting room instead, now that everyone was gone, there was nobody left to keep up the pretense with at all.
It was just me, entirely alone in the office for the first time since almost as soon as we’d started.
And as soon as I realized that, I felt like throwing up all over myself or maybe even throwing myself out of the window entirely instead.
Instead, I got up and walked over to where I’d left my bag, and began packing up everything that I owned into it instead.
And then I started on packing up my desk, one thing at a time, placing everything that had been there into one of the boxes that was stacked up on top of it instead.
And as I did, it felt like I was nailing down a coffin around my dreams instead, one nail at a time, hitting it in with every single thing that I placed inside instead.
It didn’t take long for me to finish packing up everything in the office because there wasn’t really all that much there anyway.
And as soon as I had, I left it all on top of my desk and walked out of the office and downstairs again instead.
I left the keys and some paperwork on top of the receptionist’s desk before I went out into the hallway and down towards the elevator again instead.
