I made $1,032,000 in 2025

Hey, it’s Marc, and I wish you a Happy New Year!

I’m writing this newsletter from Crete, Greece. My wife and I are looking for a new place to live — more on that later.

Here’s a recap of 2025.

My 15 income streams

I earned 20% less in 2025 than in 2024, but I wouldn’t change anything. This year was more peaceful (better work/life balance), and my revenue is more diversified now.

Here’s a breakdown of my entire portfolio’s revenue:

ShipFast and CodeFast are still my primary income sources. They currently make around $20K/month each.

DataFast

My biggest achievement this year is DataFast. I spent about 200 days building features, and it paid off. The SaaS is now at $15.8K MRR, which makes it worth roughly $800K as an asset (4× multiple on ARR). DataFast is about to cross 1,000 paying customers, with around 7% churn.

It’s growing organically at 14% MoM. Users do the marketing by sharing screenshots of their analytics. All I have to do is build features they need and love — basically my dream product.

To be honest, I have no idea what’s next for DataFast. I listen to power users, build what they ask for, and trust the process. That’s how I broke through the valley of despair (it took 4 months to reach the first $1K MRR).

TrustMRR

The most unexpected income of the year is TrustMRR. I built this side project in 24 hours, and a few days later it was at $25K MRR.

After the launch craze died down, I tried 10 different verticals to keep the project alive. Nine failed. But when I launched the buy/sell startup marketplace in December, it took off. Within the first two weeks, a dozen startups were acquired.

I’m currently working on the marketplace and hope to replace ad monetization with an acquisition fee.

Investing

I also started investing $15,000 per week in January 2025. It has returned $147K so far. Cash sitting in the bank gets eaten by inflation, so I had to make it active.

I don’t really like investing (I prefer building startups), so I picked the simplest option: the S&P 500. I also recently started investing $5,000/week in ICHN, because I believe China will keep growing. And I made my first AI investment ($20K).

Misc

I launched 3 other startups:

• BioAge (failed)

• ClipMarc (failed)

• A secret project (didn’t have time to launch yet)

A good reminder that having an audience doesn’t guarantee a successful startup!

Meanwhile, I kept sharing everything on 𝕏. I gained 100K new followers and earned $14,339. Thanks, Elon!

Getting younger?

According to my WHOOP wearable, my body age is under 18 (I’m 32).

It might sound cliché, but it’s actually hard to reach this number. WHOOP looks at sleep data, VO₂ max, daily step count, zone 2 and zone 5 workouts, strength training, and more.

The biggest change this year is that I started lifting at the gym (it’s never too late!) As a result, I gained 4 kg of mostly muscle.

I trained for over 340 days this year (mostly surfing, gym, running).

I tested my VO₂ max for the first time and scored 57.4 ml/kg/min (top 5% of men my age). VO₂ max is one of the best longevity markers.

Like in 2024, I drank 0 liters of alcohol and walked at least 10K steps every day (4.2M steps total).

Unlike 2024, I was less strict with my diet: I reintroduced carbs and allowed myself around 10% cheat meals.

7 countries, 10 books

My wife and I want to leave Bali, our home for the past 7 years.

The wake-up call came when we realized how polluted the food chain and air have become. It’s also hard to hit 10K daily steps there, and it’s far from our families (South Korea and France). So we started touring the world looking for a new nest.

In 2025, we visited 7 countries: New Zealand, India, South Africa, Spain, France, South Korea, and Greece.

Despite security issues, South Africa surprised us: organic local food, kind people, awesome nature. But our favorite so far is Hossegor, France. And now we’re in Crete, Greece, which we also love.

One reason we traveled so much was to meet you! We organized meetups from Paris to Wanaka, and it was so nice!

Along with my daily morning coffee, I read 10 books in 2025. My top three:

• The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

• The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly

• Elon Musk (biography)

That’s it for 2025!

I hope 2026 unfolds in the same way. I like my current work/life balance, and I like working every day. I hope I’ll ship even more startups, that’s what I enjoy the most.

I wish you a Happy New Year and all the best for 2026.

Marc Lou