Ventures
What I've Built
Every business I've started, organized by its current status. Active, exited on my own terms, or failed outright. No polish. Exactly as it happened.
IT Consulting & Managed Services
2019 – PresentIndependent IT consulting practice serving SMBs with infrastructure design, network architecture, cybersecurity hardening, and ongoing managed services.
The anchor of everything. Started as pure freelance, evolved into a structured practice with recurring clients across multiple countries. Profitable from month one.
Mohtashim.io — Personal Brand & Writing
2024 – PresentThis site. Writing about IT, internet entrepreneurship, and what 8+ years of doing both actually teaches you. Not a product — a body of work.
The long game. Building a distinct voice in a space full of generic content. No course funnels. No sponsorships. Just consistent, honest publishing.
E-Commerce Store #1 — Niche Physical Products
2018 – 2022Dropshipping-to-branded-product pipeline in a specific niche. Started badly (generic dropshipping), rebuilt with better unit economics, ran profitably for 2+ years before voluntary exit.
Exited on my own terms when the niche became crowded and margins compressed. Generated real revenue, paid for itself many times over, and taught me more about business fundamentals than anything else.
Digital Info Product — Technical Guide Series
2020 – 2022A series of paid technical guides leveraging my IT expertise. Built and distributed to an audience of IT professionals and freelancers.
Validated, sold, and eventually wound down when supporting it conflicted with consulting growth. Exited cleanly. A solid proof of concept for monetizing expertise directly.
Joint Venture — Online Services Platform
2019A partnership with another operator to build a done-for-you online services brand. Fell apart due to misaligned incentives and no formal agreement.
The expensive lesson: enthusiasm is not a substitute for a contract. The failure cost me time, some capital, and a few months of focus. Taught me more about due diligence and partnership structures than any success could.
Unvalidated SaaS-Adjacent Product
2021Built a tool to solve a problem I assumed existed. Spent months building before talking to potential customers. Sales were almost zero at launch.
Classic build-first, validate-never mistake. The product worked — the market was indifferent. Shut it down after 60 days of trying to sell something with no validated demand. Never built anything without validation again.
Marketplace Arbitrage Play
2022An attempt to build scale in a competitive marketplace niche, betting on a window that turned out to be closing faster than anticipated.
Misjudged competition density and the platform's algorithm shift. Lost capital and six months of focus. The core mistake was entering a market where I had no information advantage.
This list will be updated as new ventures start or change status. I'll go deeper on each one in the writing — what I tried, what happened, and what it cost.