The doubts don't come at convenient times.
They come during meditation, when my mind is supposed to be still. They come at 2 AM, when the apartment in Kuala Lumpur is quiet and my daughters are asleep. They come when I'm adjusting my Google Ads strategy for the third time in a single week, wondering if I even know what I'm doing.
Is this the right path? Is this the right market? How long can the cash last?
Six months ago, I was earning over $200K a year at Amazon Web Services. Today I make about $800 a month, working alone from my apartment in KL, running a cloud business powered by AI agents.
I gave myself a deadline: September 30th. If I can't reach $7,000 a month by then, I go back to a regular job.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about leaving big tech at 42 with two kids in international school: the most dangerous moment wasn't getting fired. It was the years before — when everything was going great and I did nothing to prepare.
The Game
I spent four years at Alibaba Cloud. If you've never worked in big tech sales in China, let me explain how it works.
Your entire existence is reduced to one thing: the number. Everything — your performance review, your bonus, your survival — depends on whether you hit it.
As a senior rep, I knew the playbook cold. Find a channel partner. Help them navigate internal policies. Bring in a third-party guarantor to solve the cash flow. Once money starts flowing through the system, your number goes up.
Except you live in constant fear that your partner takes the guaranteed credit, runs up impressive numbers, and then doesn't pay back. That risk sits on your shoulders. And every quarter, you go back to finance begging for a bigger credit line, because bigger lines mean bigger numbers, and bigger numbers mean you get to keep your job.
I did this for years. I got very good at it. And I grew to hate every minute of it.
In my last year, I stopped playing. I poured everything into an innovation project — a voice-based IoT platform for public transit. We built it from scratch. I brought together the technology partners, the go-to-market strategy, the whole thing. It made it to Yunqi Conference — Alibaba's biggest annual event. I presented it to the President of Alibaba Cloud himself.
My boss loved it. He was the reason I had the freedom to chase it.
Then my boss quit.
The new boss only cared about numbers. I had none. The PIP was inevitable.
Here's what most people don't understand: I could have stayed. During my PIP period, I pulled some veteran moves and actually hit the numbers. Alibaba would have let me stay.
But I was done.
The game doesn't change. You either keep playing, or you walk away. I walked.
The Illusion
I joined AWS. And for a while, it felt like I'd won.
Amazon stock was around $120 when I joined. Over the next few years, it more than doubled. Combine that with hitting targets and top-tier bonuses, and my total comp climbed past $200K. It felt like validation — proof I could succeed on any platform, in any system.
I'd be lying if I said it wasn't intoxicating. When the numbers keep going up, you start believing you earned it. That this is your natural state. That the peak is permanent.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, there was always a whisper: This can't last.
I told myself I should start a side project. Build something independent. Create a safety net. But when you're at the peak, the urgency never feels real. The paycheck keeps coming. The stock keeps climbing. Tomorrow always seems like a better day to start.
That's the most dangerous moment in your career — when you think you've earned it. That's exactly when you stop preparing for the fall.
By mid-2025, cracks were forming. Policies tightened. The model I'd been running got harder. I told myself I still had time — maybe one more year of vesting, maybe a nice exit package.
Then the role ended. Not on my terms. Not on my timeline.
Every major decision in my life has been made for me. The PIP at Alibaba. A rejected visa application. And now this. I never got to choose the timing. I only got to choose what to do after.
The Bridge
Before I got pushed out, something else was already pulling me.
In mid-2024, I decided to move my family to Malaysia. The Chinese education system had turned my wife into a knot of anxiety — if our daughters' grades slipped even slightly, the whole household went into crisis mode. The kids were working hard but learning nothing that mattered. I needed to break that cycle.
We tried for a Hong Kong talent visa first. Six months of paperwork. Rejected. So we looked at Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia. KL won. By July 2025, we were here.
That move changed everything — not because of the location, but because it forced me to see clearly. I was in a new country, my safety net was gone, and for the first time in eight years, I had to answer a simple question: What do I actually know that's worth something?
The answer: I know how cloud companies really work. I know who gets served and who gets ignored. I spent eight years watching developers in emerging markets get locked out — not because they lacked skills or projects, but because the payment systems weren't built for them. Virtual cards flagged as fraud. Debit cards rejected by anti-fraud algorithms. Real demand, blocked by infrastructure nobody bothered to fix.
Inside these companies, everyone knows about it. Nobody fixes it. Because there's no quota attached to "help a developer in Lagos get past the payment screen."
So I built the bridge myself.
I partnered with established cloud distributors who handle the backend infrastructure. My job is the last mile — finding the developers who need access to AWS and Google Cloud, and making the buying experience seamless. No credit card required. No payment friction. USDT prepaid, money in, account ready.
I built the entire operation with AI. Claude Code became my co-founder. SEO, content, outreach, ads, community management — all orchestrated by one person from a laptop. The kind of operation that would have required a team of five two years ago.
Two weeks in, I got my first customer. Riley found my website and reached out on Telegram. Day one, he asked detailed questions. I answered fast. Thought he was ready to buy. Then — silence.
He's gone. Another dead lead.
Day two, I followed up. Low pressure. Just checking in.
He bought immediately. $500. Twenty-four hours from first contact to payment.
When he saw how fast it worked, he said two words: "So fast."
That felt incredible. For about five minutes.
Then reality hit: I need ten more Rileys. As of today, I don't have them.
The Ceiling
I've been working with AI since December 2023 — over two years now. I've built automations, written content, run research, managed customer communications, all with AI.
Here's what most people get wrong about it:
If you don't have a problem, that's your biggest problem.
AI is an amplifier, not an engine. If you don't know where you're going, AI definitely doesn't know where you're going. You'll stay stuck asking it to summarize articles and draft emails. That's using a rocket as a bicycle.
But when you have a clear destination — when you can see that point on the horizon, even if you're nowhere close — AI becomes real leverage. The kind that lets one person operate like a fifty-person company.
The ceiling isn't the technology. The ceiling is you. Your clarity about what you want. Your willingness to define the problem before asking for solutions. Your courage to set a target that terrifies you and then build systems to reach it.
My target: $7,000 a month by September 30th.
I'm not there. Not even close. My wife knows I got fired. At first she was furious. Then scared. I told her our savings could carry us two to three years. I asked for six months.
"If by September there's no upward trend, I'll get a job. But this is the best era to try. One person can outrun a company. I already missed the internet era. I'm not missing this one."
She agreed. Reluctantly. The anxiety still shows up sometimes. I get it. I feel it too.
But here's what I know for certain:
When you decide to do something, don't hesitate. The best time was probably years ago. The real moment is now. I spent years at AWS knowing I should build something on the side. I had the skills, the knowledge, the network. But the paycheck was comfortable, and tomorrow always seemed like a better day to start.
Tomorrow came on December 12th, 2025. I wasn't ready.
Now I am.
I'm documenting every step — the $800 months, the strategy pivots, the doubt, and hopefully, the breakthroughs. If you're building something alone in the AI era, follow along.
→ @FightyAI on X
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