I have this fantasy of becoming a billionaire. No, owning fancy cars and sprawling estates doesn’t captivate my imagination. What fascinates me is the journey, the process, and the impact—whether positive or negative—that a billionaire can have on society. Think about Elon Musk handing away a giant $1,000,000 check every day to buy votes, lmao.

Why aim for a billion and not a million? Because when you’re dreaming, might as well dream big. Pretty much everyone with a decent income can save and invest their way to a million dollars. But a billion? That’s an entirely different beast.

To reach that level, you need more than just good financial habits—you need groundbreaking ideas, relentless execution, and a dash of luck. It’s no doubt a daunting and close to impossible task.

If you move to the Philippines, however, becoming a billionaire is 58 times easier—at least according to today’s exchange rate!

But I’m not going to write a “How to” article for something I haven’t accomplished myself. I figured I should ask the question on r/phinvest, a subreddit on Reddit dedicated for Filipinos interested in growing their money, just to get instant responses (and crowd source content for this blog).

“Retiring at 55yo with a nest egg of $3M USD in the Philippines. How can I become a peso billionaire?”

I detailed my self-imposed limitations to avoid being taxed heavily. And that I don’t want to get there selling skin whitening products!

You see, many Filipinos are freaking obsessed with trying to look like a K-pop star with flawless skin tone as if they’ve been hiding from the sun their entire lives– in a tropical paradise, lol.

The post garnered over 558 up votes and 391 responses. It was the most popular topic for three consecutive days on the site.

As I expected, it received a mixed response of discouragement and encouragement. Some saw it as an impossible dream, while others were inspired by the ambition and potential to achieve it. It’s always a tug-of-war between doubt and determination.

Many questioned why the hell I’m asking this on Reddit. One simply said, something like f*** you, you greedy SOB, as if I’m trying to exploit cheap labor.

But the most thoughtful response came from a Cambodian-American with a Fil-Am business partner who formed an expat entrepreneurial group about 15 years ago. He started his response by asking,

“Have you owned or started a business before?”

He then added, “Because if you’ve been a salaried worker your entire life, let me tell you that starting / running a business in the Philippines is a completely different type of animal. I won’t say one is harder than the other. But they’re just very different worlds and require different skillsets. I’ve known people who worked for F50 companies, Bay Area tech startups, and IBs get crushed in the Philippines.”

“For starters, there is a lot of corruption. That is something relatively foreign to a lot of Americans, and many lose their shirt when opening a business in the Philippines. Secondly, blood runs thicker than water here. Especially if you’re in B2B, you’ll wonder why people are buying inferior products from your competitors at higher price points. And, of course, imitation is quite blatant here. Have a great startup idea? Before you know it, a senator’s son will create the same product or service, and then you’ll be harassed by regulators. Let’s just say it’s not a coincidence.”

“Then there’s enforcement of law and contracts. Someone doesn’t honor a contract with you? Have fun trying to enforce that in Philippine courts in a timely manner. And if you’re competing with big players, be prepared to pay off a judge, because they will be.”

“Unless you have business experience, domain expertise, an incredible level of grit (can’t emphasize this enough), and relevant connections, I think coming to the Philippines with $4 million hoping to turn it into $20 million is a tall order. But if you can pull it off, hats off to you.”

A billion peso is actually $17 million, but his advice is very much spot on!

My billion-peso business plan

To answer the question: yes, I owned and operated a small gym in Manila and had very limited success selling CMS software online after moving to the states several years ago. This was before WordPress became popular and shut my side-hustle for good. And I do have an ongoing real estate business there now. I’m very much aware of the bureaucracy, corruption and other challenges in doing business in the Philippines.

For the very reason he mentioned, I am actually contemplating registering my dream business in the USA instead where my source of revenue will be coming from anyway while exploiting cheap labor maintaining operations in the Philippines.

Since my skillset is web/ software development, I can start a subscription-model website that will connect Filipino remote workers to US employers. That way, my revenue is still in USD. Sure, this has been done before. But there is certainly room for multiple players in this space.

Pretty much any jobs that can be done remotely can be outsourced: virtual assistants, software engineers, bookkeepers, graphic designers, accountants, to name a few. Having proximity and ties to the University Belt area where there’s vast pool of fresh, young, but equally motivated interns is my competitive advantage.

Hiring mostly interns and outsourcing jobs in countries like India is how my company’s big boss, currently #71 in the Forbes rich list, got there. Obviously, he has a different business model. But then, I’m not trying to become as rich as him, let alone Elon Musk! One billion pesos is only $17 million.

If this highly scalable business consistently generates $2 million in revenue, it can be bought for $20 million or ten times the revenue according to one valuation method. Presto, that’s over a billion pesos!

Of course, I made it sound easy. Whether this becomes a reality, let’s wait and see.