In 2014, I didn't know people made money on the internet.
I'm not talking about "I didn't know how." I mean I genuinely didn't know it was possible. I was 14, living in Morocco, playing football for my city's team. My dream was to go professional. That was it. That was the whole plan.
But I was always that kid who couldn't leave things alone. If my family bought something new -- anything, a phone, an appliance, a toy -- I had to open it. Not to break it. To understand it. How does this work? Who made this? Why does it do what it does? Me and my friends were building robots out of whatever we could find. Curiosity wasn't something I had to practice. It was just how I was wired.
Then one day in 2014, everything changed -- and I didn't even realize it at the time.
The Guy Who Slept in My House
My father's friend had a son. He was around 20, smart, studying informatics at university. The problem was he lived in a small town with no university, so he came to stay with us for a few months while he studied in our city.
We talked a lot. And one day he said something that cracked my brain open.
"What if we make money from the internet? Blogging. Google AdSense. Affiliate marketing."
I had no idea what any of that meant. Neither did he, really. But we were both curious enough to try.
So we started. We created blogs. We found these websites that paid you fractions of a cent to click on ads. In 2014, these platforms were everywhere -- and we were on all of them, clicking away, earning almost nothing, thinking we were onto something.
We weren't onto something. We were just clicking ads.
Nobody showed us. Nobody explained it. We were two people in Morocco trying to figure out the internet alone, and we were doing it the hardest possible way.
The Worst Mistake I Made for Four Years
From 2014 to 2018, I jumped from domain to domain to domain.
This is the thing I'd go back and shake myself over. Every time I saw a trending niche, I'd drop what I was doing and chase it. A new blog. A new idea. A fresh start. Over and over.
You want to know what I built in four years of jumping around?
Nothing. Zero. Just wasted time.
The internet rewards people who stay. Who go deep. Who give a domain a real chance before deciding it doesn't work. I never did that. I saw something shiny and I moved. And I paid for it with years.
DevilBuzz: 3,000 Users and a Copyright Strike
Eventually I stopped jumping. I looked at what was working and I copied the model.
BuzzFeed, ViralNova -- these viral content sites were printing traffic. So I built DevilBuzz. Same style, same energy. I started growing. From zero to 3,000 monthly organic users. No ads, no budget. Just content and distribution.
I was 18. I thought I'd figured it out.
Then AdSense rejected me. Copyright issues, they said. And they weren't wrong -- I was 18 and I didn't understand that repurposing content without rights was a problem. I stopped posting. Traffic dropped. I shut it down.
I felt genuinely bad about that one. DevilBuzz had real traction. It was the first time I'd built something that actually grew. And I killed it not because the idea failed, but because I didn't know what I didn't know.
Football, Spain, and a Pandemic
I went back to my first dream. Football.
I moved to Spain. Ended up playing for Terrassa, third division, 2019-2020. I was doing it. Living the thing I'd wanted since I was a kid in Morocco kicking a ball around.
Then COVID hit. The season stopped. I got dropped from the team.
And I had nothing but time.
Most people froze in 2020. I saw a window. Masks were scarce, demand was through the roof, supply chains were chaos. I started selling masks online. Made profit. Nothing crazy, but enough to remind me that I knew how to spot an opportunity and move fast.
Then Halloween came.
Jabberin Jack: 1,000 Orders in One Season
Me and a friend found a product. Novelty Halloween item, manufactured in China. We built a store, called it Jabberin Jack, and ran it hard. 1,000+ orders in a single season. Zero prior e-commerce experience. Just pattern recognition, fast execution, and a deadline.
When Halloween ended, so did the store. But that season taught me more about selling than four years of clicking ads ever did.
Grow Genius: Making Real Money, Then Losing It Stupidly
My first real company. Grow Genius SL, a digital marketing agency in Barcelona.
I got clients through cold DMs and running my own Google Ads and YouTube campaigns to prove I knew what I was doing. It worked. I got clients. I ran campaigns. I generated 113,000+ impressions at EUR 0.23 CPC -- more than 50% below industry benchmarks.
And then I started making money. Real money. More than I'd ever had.
And I completely lost my head.
I went out every night. I paid for everyone's tables. I stopped caring about the work because the money was coming in anyway, and I was 23 and I thought that's how it worked. You get good, you get clients, you get paid, you spend.
I lost every client. Not because I wasn't good enough. Because I stopped showing up. Because money, when you're not used to it and you're young and surrounded by people who want a piece of it, will make you forget why you had it in the first place.
That's the most honest thing I can tell you.
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me in 2014
The internet between 2013 and 2018 was a different place.
Less crowded. Less competition. Less noise. The same effort that gets you a small result today would have gotten you a massive one back then. I was there. I had the curiosity, the drive, the time. And I spent those years clicking on ads for fractions of a cent.
Nobody told me. Nobody in my environment knew. We were figuring it out blind.
I'm not bitter about it. Everything that happened -- DevilBuzz, football, Jabberin Jack, Grow Genius, the money I made and the money I burned -- it all built the same person. The one who now knows how to spot an opportunity, move fast, kill what doesn't work, and stay humble enough to keep going when it falls apart.
Now
I'm building two things right now. Recatch, a mobile memories app. And Gofy, a hyperlocal map of live deals in Barcelona. Both solo. Both from scratch.
I don't have investors. I don't have a team. I have what I've always had -- curiosity, a bias toward action, and the experience of failing enough times to know what not to do.
The 14-year-old clicking ads in Morocco would have a lot to say about where I ended up.
I think he'd be okay with it.