The 168M challenge starts negative, and I'm fine with that

I haven't written about the 168M challenge in a while. Mostly because I was buried in content, straightening out some serious flaws in my flagship SaaS, and honestly a little surprised at how smoothly that part is currently going.

This week wasn't smooth, though. Fucking hell. Everything, from the SaaS to recording, was a pain in the ass, and I was more frustrated than usual.

Still, I told myself I needed to update the 168M challenge, even though updating it today isn't exactly a happy occasion. The number I'm about to share isn't good news.

But I figured I'd rip the bandage off and take the pain in one go instead of dragging this shit out.

The challenge isn't going anywhere, and right now is the hardest part. I hate staring at a scoreboard sitting at zero, but the truth is it's not even zero. It's negative. And weirdly, that might be a good thing. If it really goes red, it might motivate me more than a flat zero ever could.

Read also: Scoreboard is still zero, but I changed approach.

Updating the numbers

I almost forgot to do this, but I need to update where I stand. Since I'm under zero, I have to look back at everything I've spent since I started.

That means more than just my Claude Pro subscription. It includes the domain names I bought too, and for some miraculous reason I'm still on the free tier on Vercel, though that's not going to last much longer. Still a fucking miracle.

My count starts on May 9th, which is when I began vibe coding. You can see that on my GitHub profile. I didn't start paying for a Claude subscription until May 21st, because the first days I was testing out the waters on free tiers, which I think were far more generous back then.

So I went back and added it all up. Claude AI cost me $80 so far. All the domain names combined came to $188.21. Spacemail email, spread across multiple plans for a year, added another $47.04. All together, I've spent $315.25 since May 2026.

So that zero on the scoreboard isn't real. It's negative. Also, that remaining $15.04 in usage credits you see on my billing page isn't what I paid for. It was a one-time $100 promotional credit Claude gave in July 2026, so this isn't a cost I paid for.

A chunk of that domain number is from going a little wild during my early honeymoon phase with vibe coding, buying one name after another before realizing in August that I needed to focus on one build instead of twelve different projects.

The number is also inflated because it includes an upcoming renewal for my most premium domain, two.so, the one tied to my flagship SaaS and honestly the whole catalyst for this journey, after I turned down an $8,000 offer for it. A name like that on a .so extension renews at $68.98, which is what's sitting in my Namecheap cart right now, so that single domain skews the $188.21 total by itself.

The numbers are real, though. I included a screenshot of my Claude billing, but I'm leaving out the domain and email one because I can't show everything. I think you can take my word for it. Who wants to fucking brag about how much they're spending?

Limbo & decision

I kept going back and forth on whether I should add startup capital to the road to 168 million, or start from zero with nothing but my burn and see how I could find my way to the first real dollar.

Then I'd circle back to the other option: add a runway balance to accelerate early revenue and let myself take bigger risk and reward decisions.

I couldn't pick one, so I landed on a compromise. I'll add a balance as runway, but it can't go toward day trading, poker, or anything else high-risk.

It's official runway, treated like a pre-seed or seed round, except I'm the one funding it.

My subscription costs are only going to grow, and if I don't take the 168M challenge seriously enough, I can't benchmark anything or put any real pressure on myself.

This feels closer to what it's like when someone quits their job and goes full solo. There's pressure built in from day one.

Even if I end up missing the target inside the runway I set, that would prove a point too. It's not fucking easy. I usually tell people they need eighteen months of financial runway to cover their living expenses if they're going to try something like this, so I'm applying that same logic to myself. Well, kinda.

I landed on $5,000.

It's not a random number either. A few days ago I wrote about deciding not to upgrade my hardware, and only spending soon on a new microphone and a pair of headphones. I dropped the idea of replacing everything I currently use, and when I did the math in that post, it came out to close to ten grand in one go.

Read also: Hardware upgrade, part 2: do I really need all of it?

Now that I'm not spending that, I'm reallocating some of it toward the challenge instead. That feels fair to me.

I've updated the tracker. It's live on my blog under the 168M category for anyone who wants to follow along.

What's next?

Now that I've set something like a seed round, and I've accounted for what I've spent so far, I'm going to think through a short-term experiment to get the real zero off the board.

Before that though, I need to fix what's broken in the SaaS, find some kind of rhythm with recording, and put together a better plan for this challenge, one I'll write about or show publicly when it's ready.

Read also: Claude said we fixed the SaaS MVP bugs, but I don't fucking know

So that's where things stand. The board reads negative $315.25, with a $5,000 runway now backing it. Not zero, not clean, just where I actually am right now.