Daniel Vassallo

Ex-Amazon engineer who popularized the small bets portfolio approach

@dvassallo United States205K followers$210K profit in 9 monthsVerified on TrustMRR ↗Educators & Course Creators Community Builders Creators & Writers Developer Tools

About Daniel Vassallo

Daniel Vassallo is a former Amazon Web Services engineer who, in 2019, walked away from a job paying more than $500K a year to work for himself. His first bet, the end-to-end encrypted backend Userbase, did not take off the way he hoped, so he switched to a portfolio of smaller bets shared openly on Twitter.

The info products that followed became a case study for the indie world: The Good Parts of AWS, co-written with Josh Pschorr, and the course Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience together brought in over $210K in profit in their first nine months. Inspired by Nassim Taleb's thinking on randomness, he argued that a portfolio of small bets beats a single big swing.

In late 2021 he launched Small Bets, a community and live-class platform for small-time entrepreneurs that grew to thousands of members. He sold Small Bets to Gumroad in April 2025 for a reported $3.6M while continuing to run it. His newer experiments include Single Server, a self-hosting deployment tool, and Full Send, a browser racing game.

Products by Daniel Vassallo

Small Bets

smallbets.com

acquired

Community and expert-led classes for small-time entrepreneurs; sold to Gumroad in 2025.

Sold for $3.6M

Userbase

userbase.com

Open-source, end-to-end encrypted backend for building secure web apps without a server.

TrustMRR ↗

Single Server

singleserver.com

Wires up Cloudflare, Tailscale, Docker, Kamal and GitHub so every git push deploys all your projects to one server.

Full Send

fullsend.game

Top-down 2D browser racing game with time trials, multiplayer races and a global leaderboard.

TrustMRR ↗

Builds indie alternatives to:Firebase

Revenue

Daniel Vassallo has publicly reported $210K profit in 9 months (info products) (as of 2020). Source

Live, payment-provider-verified numbers for Daniel Vassallo's products are on TrustMRR: View on TrustMRR ↗

Exit story

Small Bets

→ Gumroad · 2025

$3.6M for 90%

Daniel Vassallo framed it as a strategic fit: Gumroad wanted to offer creators more than payment processing, and Small Bets would serve as a testing ground for a community that helps entrepreneurs.

by Daniel Vassallo

Daniel Vassallo's journey, 2019–20255 milestones · self-reported

Revenue (monthly, log scale)
First product
Went full time
Exit
Started 2019

2019Went full time: Left Amazon after 8+ years
2020Revenue: $210K profit in nine months≈ $23K/mo dvassallo.medium.com
2021First product: Launched the Small Bets community
2023Revenue: Small Bets: $800K in its first two years≈ $33K/mo
2025Exit: Sold Small Bets to Gumroad (~$3.6M)

Timeline

2019 — Left his job at Amazon after more than eight years to work for himself.
2020 — Made over $210K profit in nine months from The Good Parts of AWS and his Twitter course.
2021 — Launched the Small Bets community.
2023 — Small Bets passed $800K in revenue in its first two years.
2025 — Sold Small Bets to Gumroad for a reported $3.6M.

How Daniel builds

Place many small bets instead of one big bet; outcomes are hard to predict.
Keep things simple and avoid leaving your fate to a single employer or product.
Build an audience by sharing what you know openly.
Optimize for independence and optionality over prestige.

Learn from Daniel Vassallo

[book]

The Good Parts of AWS

Opinionated guide to the AWS services worth using, co-written with Josh Pschorr.

by Daniel Vassallo

[course]

Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience

Video course on growing an audience on Twitter/X from scratch.

by Daniel Vassallo

[community]

Small Bets

Library of expert-led classes for entrepreneurs (closed to new members as of 2026).

by Daniel Vassallo

Daniel Vassallo FAQ

Who is Daniel Vassallo?

Daniel Vassallo is an ex-Amazon engineer who left a $500K/year job in 2019 to become independent, wrote The Good Parts of AWS and founded the Small Bets community.