I purchased, gutted and renovated a 1 bed flat in the city 4 years ago. It's gained about $7,000 a month every month for the last 3 years, plus saving about $3,000 in rent. Not exactly 'income' but most certainly passive, and I do plan to sell out when I feel prices are aproaching a peak and move out the city so will yeild then. Neighbouring flats usually sell within 7 days of going to market.

Which city?

(There's more than one you know!)

London. The financial district is often referred to simply as 'the city', so force of habit!

Haven't seen flats sell as quickly as they are now. Living a 3 minute walk from Liverpool Street station and the flat I wa renting sold by the second viewing. It was on the market for three days but things are cooling off.

I had assumed that, but thought it best to ask :)

I was thinking San Francisco, that sounds about for the bay area too.

22 is so young.

At 21 I was on a plane headed home from another country. I cried in the office. I cried on the plane home. We'd Burned almost half a million dollars, a couple of years of work, let go a team - and had nothing to show for it. With no degree, no more money and no job I moved back in with parents.

So I suppose this article resonates, and in the most literal sense - I've been there.

I think the hardest thing for me at that moment in time was I didn't really have a handle on just how young I was and how much more I had coming. It was all I'd really done with my life up to that point.

It's taken me quite a few years to gain that perspective, and it's a difficult thing to communicate. The world is inconceivably vast and expansive and you have the next half century to build within it. Yourself, your ideas, your creations.

At that age and on that scale it's only a failure in the moment. Then, as time passes it becomes just another step along the way. It imparted knowledge upon you, and opened doors you don't even know about yet. All of the parts that hurt fade away and you're just left with the experience gained.

The fast-paced echo-chamber of the technology startup world is a particularly hard environment to step back and get a real sense of perspective in, which makes it a particularly hard environment to fail in, especially as you'll always be reading about someone else magically killing it.

I've failed since then, and I've succeeded since then. But as the years roll by, I've come to realise that the winning and losing don't even matter, because the journey just keeps on going regardless. If I saw myself now, when I was on that plane at 21, I'd have thought I was looking at someone who had mythically 'made it'. But you know what? I haven't. It's exactly the same: I've got another 40-odd-years of succeeding and failing ahead of me, in both my personal life and my professional life.

Personally I find that quite cathartic.

Dude, every single post you've made in this thread is negative.

Yes, hardship is relative. Yes, hardship in a first world country is relatively easy (compared to your example)

Some of these startups are targetting the developing world - if it takes a few fashion startups to get there, so be it. You don't know what Nikki's second, third, fourth or fifth venture will be.