This is Tom Anderson. At 35 years old, he sold Myspace for $580M. Then he bizarrely vanished. Here's his story:

Tom's startup Myspace launched in 2003. Everyone used it. Pop culture embraced it. Most of all, musicians loved it. It was the first time followers meant something. It scared all the middlemen who owned distribution.

Myspace was sold in 2005 for $580 million. Tom walked away from the experiment rich. He attempted to stay on for a few years at the company, but became frustrated with: • Endless meetings • The inability for anybody to make a decision So he left.

Tom then dabbled with a few adviser roles. In 2009 he retired. Since then most people have no idea what happened to him.

Here’s his weird concept of retirement: "I’ll never say ‘never’ because, more than anything, I like the idea that anything can happen. I don’t know exactly where my life will lead. Adventure and the unknown has always been appealing to me."

Tom was going to travel the world and do nothing. In 2011, he visited the Burning Man Festival. He became inspired by photography. “I’m not necessarily trying to represent nature exactly. I’m trying to make something beautiful like a painter would” – Tom

Tom traveled the world as a photographer for a few years. “I haven’t wanted to take commissions or sell my photos, or do anything commercial with it — that would just feel like work, which I don’t want to do.” All of his photographs got posted on Instagram.

Tom disappeared again. His last Instagram post was in 2018. He did one interview with Tai Lopez in ~2019. And he wrote one post on Meta's Threads app. Other than that he's completely silent. No one knows if Tom still does photography.

What you can learn from Myspace Tom: 1. Doing creative work for the sake of it is a deeply fulfilling and odd experience. It’s worth you experimenting with like Tom did.

2. Time is worth more than money “I’ll pay a lot to not waste time. Time is the most important thing to me — how can you do all the things you want to do with such limited time. … I’m hoping the science of life extension makes progress.”

3. The purpose of retirement is not to quit work. It’s to quit the type of work you have to do for money, so you can do whatever work you want and not need to stress about how much it pays.

• Retire from work you do for money as soon as you can. • Buy back your time. Buying stuff forces you to work longer for money.

4. Dumb meetings & indecision aren’t worth it It forced Tom to walk away from corporate life. Tom likes to build stuff and explore his creative passions. It’s hard to make progress when you’ve got a corporate giant molding you for their exploitation and benefit.

5. Real passion keeps you going • When money is taken care of, work changes its meaning. • If you’re not intentional about that meaning, then you’ll end up having a new meaning written for you which may not be consistent with living a good life.

6. Success is about what you DON'T do Tom didn't use Myspace to: • Mess with elections • Steal people's data • Inflate his ego • Increase hate speech He just built something awesome that was a net-positive for society.

Final Thought Tom is badass. Stop doing stuff you don't give a f*ck about and build something that feels like play. Then disappear if you make it big and hold on to your privacy.

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