Powerball Effect

Recently, I found this new thing. Maybe just tonight. I'm planning to call it the Powerball Effect. Yeah, fuck it. I named it.

It's not that Powerball really makes you a fucking rich person. It means that before you get the result, you briefly live in a totally different world.

I first felt this last Christmas, when I was on the way to Sequoia Park with my friend Jin. That day, the Powerball jackpot was something like $1.7 billion. So when we passed by a gas station, we just bought two tickets. And after buying those tickets, the world was fucking different.

We started seriously talking about what if we actually won. At that time, I was visiting the U.S. with my B1/B2 visa, so I started thinking, if I really won this thing, how am I gonna take the money? Would the IRS tax me? Do I need a lawyer? Do I need to set up a trust? Should I not go back to China first?

And my friend Jin was even more insane. He said, if you really win, maybe you won't be able to walk out of the hotel alive. I said, what? And he said, because if the winning ticket is yours, he might just take the ticket, drive the car away, and I will never see him again in my whole life. That was fucking crazy. We were laughing so hard in the car.

Then later, when we got back to the hotel, I said I was going to take a shower. Jin said, don't you need to wait until 9? Because the result was coming out at 9. What he meant was, if the result came out while I was showering, and the winning ticket was mine, then maybe by the time I came back from the bathroom, the ticket would already be gone. And maybe he would be gone too. That was fucking stupid, but we were really high.

And the craziest thing is, in the end, my ticket actually got three numbers right. Of course, I didn't win the $1.7 billion. But during those few hours, we had already lived a $1.7 billion life.

That's what I mean by the Powerball Effect. It's not about actually winning. It's about holding a ticket that might change your life, and before the result comes out, you start seriously imagining another version of your life.

And I found that startups are kind of the same thing. Recently, I've been building Raily, an app that feels like Flighty for rail. I posted something on RedNote and did some small promotions. At first, I didn't really think it would become anything.

But then tonight, around 1 or 2 a.m., I suddenly found that some people actually liked this thing. Maybe just four or five people. But my feeling was: Oh my God, that's fucking a lot. Finally, someone saw me.

So I posted another video. A couple hours later, about 70 people had joined the group. They wanted to try the app. The video had around 2,000 views, which means every 10 or 20 people, someone wanted to join the group and try this thing. And at that moment, I entered the Powerball Effect.

I started thinking: What if this really works? What if Raily really becomes the Flighty for rail? Flighty is for airplanes, and it can do millions in ARR. What about rail? There are so fucking many people taking trains every day. China, Europe, Japan, the UK, Amtrak, commuters, students, business travelers, rail fans. So if Flighty can do $6M ARR, why can't Raily do $20M? Fuck that. Maybe even bigger.

Anyway, this is the Powerball Effect.