When I was 18, I bought a Spider-Man costume, and made over $50k in a few weeks, at Times Square.

When I was 18, I bought a Spider-Man costume, and made over $50k in a few weeks, at Times Square. Was in New York City, Summer of 2012. Just finished boarding school in England, running several mobile apps with no intention to go to university. Plan was to travel the world, whilst building the next Google.

My parents were retired, after running a successful tech company in Singapore, and spent the year in NYC, so was visiting them.

My mother, Sandra, was doing a year-long chef course at the French culinary institute, working for free at the top Michelin rated restaurants in the city for experience. (Le Cirque, Jonathan Benno etc)

So I was walking through Times Square, and observing Mickey Mouse, taking pictures with tourist and getting tips, receiving $1, $5, $10, $20 bills, with a long line of people waiting.

I mentioned to my friend, I was walking with, it seemed to be a very profitable venture, made a joke, wondering if I should go get a costume and start doing it.

My friend thought I was joking, I kind of was, but decided to go to “New York Costumes” on Broadway and East 11th, picked up a Spider-Man costume, for a steep $220.

That afternoon, made $300, over an hour or two, taking pictures with people, and that evening, $2k or so.

Continued to do it for two months, would work on the computer, coding during the day, then go to Times Square in the evening from 7pm to 11pm, averaging about $1k to $3k each evening. People even gave $100 for a picture.

Made about $50k, which seemed lots for an 18 year old at the time, adjusting for inflation.

Was good fun, got me to be more friendly, outgoing and conversational with strangers, and made people smile.

My parents were both not so pleased, for safety reasons. They had an apartment on W58th street(billionaires row), so I would walk back on 7th Ave, from Times Square.

One month in, it got slightly repetitive, menial and boring - so I started listening to podcasts and audiobooks underneath the costume.

I finished the Michael Sandel’s law/legal/philosophy course at Harvard titled “Justice”, several business/tech books(lean startup/blue ocean strategy) and few programming books too.

Then, got introduced to a struggling entrepreneur named Scott, by my friend Elizabeth. He wanted me to invest in his app, and finish coding it, he was an ideas/business guy, not a developer.

Instead of doing both, lent him the costume so he could afford to buy one for himself, then he continued to do it until his startup could get off the ground.

He ended up raising $4.5m for his business, sold it to Halborn, one of the leading crypto auditing firms, led global partnerships for the top decentralised exchange, Shapeshift.

We recently reconnected at a conference, when he was offering to have Halborn, do a technical audit, for Unit Network.

I spoke Spanish so coordinated to maximise the efficiency, with all the Mexicans, Guatemalan, Salvadorian and Latin Americas, to rotate positions around Times Square, every hour, as they generally all gathered around the center.

Walked past recently, thought it wouldn’t be possible to do the same now, Times Square seemed to be way more sketchy/dangerous, people maybe less generous with tips.

If you notice in the pictures, have a bag of cash, which I would place below my feet when taking each picture. Didn’t charge, was purely based on tips/donations, and was free to those who couldn’t afford.

Found all these pictures on instagram which launched less than two years prior then got acquired for $1B, and twitter where I would find hundreds of pictures taken with me.

Made me sympathetic towards public figures/celebrities, when walking back from Times Square, would have people stopping to take pictures with me, or shouting “spiderman”.

Probably why I’ve been private on social media, and not developed a personal following online. Quite limited upside in being “famous”.

Think, my intention then, was to someday tell this story, alongside building tech that would change the world.

Unit Network Mainnet in 5 days! 24-10-24. Here we come! :)