Becoming a trillionaire - Fanfest 2023 Talk by Eden Trade

At this year's Fanfest, Eden Trade gave a talk on how he became a trillionaire in Eve, titled "becoming a tycoon".

Well worth listening to, good slides, very open and takes 45 minutes.

The Journey started in 2019 and today Eden Trade is making 60bn isk profits per month and is aiming for 100bn per month.  He has 60 trade characters, so thats 20 accounts that be spends 40-50bn isk per month for Omega.

There are always three parts to this type of talk i enjoy

1) the strategy and the evolution of the business model from the start to today

2) the excitement of the journey as milestones are reached, the ups & downs and then the 1 trillion is hit.

3) future plans

The Strategy and Business Model

The strategy of Eden Trade is to create new market hubs in High Sec outside of the main trading hubs and to sell items that have decent daily volume.

He buys from Sell Orders in Jita, has the items couriered to his Trade locations and puts them up for sale for around a 25% market up.

He faces next to no competition and so has great sales and profit margins.

He is very open, he shows us where is trade locations are and what he typically sells (ammo is the second biggest item!, Rigs the highest, weapons in number three followed by mining equipment).

He goes through how his strategy and business model has evolved over time and a more recent inclusion of a data person will likely result in a further evolution of the business model to move away from items that don't sell.

And good slides on the lessons he has learned, how he chose the locations.

In summary, he is filling a gap in the market where demand clearly exists.  Like me, he exists because people will value their time highly and so will not make the journey to Jita to buy items if these items are available closer to them at a higher price.

The journey to becoming a trillionaire

Eden Trade takes us through 2019 to today, showing the ups and downs.  How he initially had investors that have since all been repaid.

Always exciting to listen to the point where a business model is bedded down enough to gather momentum on its own.

Eden Trade information

Eden Trade has his own youtube channel and discord server.

He is also an investor on the Oz Tank show (a show where Eve players pitch ideas, whether content of investment ideas, to trillionaires who then decide how much to contribute.

Month end update - August / September 2023

Busy times, i was away for half of September.

Profits after everything including Plex

In August my profits were 39bn isk and in September my profits were also 39bn isk, after paying 8.2bn in each month to upgrade to Omega for another 30 days for four accounts.

August was a typical slow summer month where as September i was only around for half of it.

That said, October is proving to be a slow month which is surprising me.

Distributions made

From those profits i distributed a total of 55bn isk to the Oz Tank Show, making my total distributions made or due to the Oz Tank Show to 98bn isk.

At the start of October, i distributed or promised a further 77bn isk.

My aim is to distribute all the profits i make.

So, to put this in context in July onwards i have made profits of 132bn isk and distributed 98bn isk.  Then add in the 77bn distributed in October.

Total Wealth

Therefore, at the end of September my total wealth was 1.16 trillion isk.

What i am selling

Same as usual - Implants, Blueprints, ship equipment.

There is a competitor for the Blueprints in a few of my trading locations now.  Updating their prices daily.  Will be a battle of attrition.

Current Wealth

Current wealth is 1.16 trillion ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 0bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 26bn ISK
• Items in hanger for use in business 11bn ISK
• Omega brought forward 8bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 51bn ISK
• items for sale 1.2 trillion ISK

• less a 20% provision 238bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 128bn ISK from which 20bn of Oz Tank distributions need to be taken off

When i add up my wealth, I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to ISK or are used to generate isk that can be readily resold back onto the market.  Any ships or skills or fittings etc i buy are counted as expenses in that month.  The only exception to this rule is Blueprint Originals i use for manufacturing.  They are held at cost.

* I take a 20% provision against the items I am selling.  Eve calculates wealth by adding up the value of the sell orders hence it is possible to increase your wealth by buying an item for 100m ISK and putting a sell order for 120m ISK (in this case your wealth would increase by 20m ISK).  For me, I want my wealth to be calculated at cost.  I know that the value of my sell orders will likely fall over time as I update my orders downwards as competition reduces their prices before my items are sold.  Hence the 20% provision is my best guess as to what the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.  In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.

Plex / Omega deal - 3 months is great value

For the first time in a long time the 1 month Omega cost has been discounted from 500 Plex to 350 and the 3 month Omega cost also discounted from 1200 to 1050 (it had sat on a long term discount from 1500 to 1200 previously).

This deal closes on 17 October and is available on the New Eden Store.

The cost of the other Omega times had not changed from their long term discounts.

As ever, the question is what is the best deal and the answer to that really depends on how you use your ISK in the game.

The thought process for an ingame business to decide which is the best deal

For me, i operate an ingame business and so the answer is not as clear as it may first appear to be.

For example, if i chose to buy 3 month Omega for all my 4 Omega accounts i would be spending 21bn isk vs the more usual 23bn, if no discount at all is given, 29bn.  But the calculation does not stop at comparing the 21bn cost to the other costs i would have paid.

I need to ask myself what 21bn invested into my business would have done.  Maybe the answer is just to take the 1 month deal for now, who knows.

Fortunately, i can work this out by asking myself the question of what my business would need to return each month if i decided to invest in the one month Omega each month instead of taking the 3 or 6 or 12 or 24 month deals:

The key column in the table above is the last column.  This tells my what my monthly return on my business must be to do better than taking the Omega deal.  (the working process is at the bottom of this post).

The clear winner is the 3 month deal where my business would need to do better than 51% returns each month - that is unlikely to happen.

The calculation process

What i do is compare two assumptions.  Lets use an example of the 3 month Omega deal:

If i go for it then i would spend 5.1bn isk per account vs the normal cost of 7.4bn isk, so a saving of 2.2bn isk for what is a 30% discount.

However, i must also compare this to taking that 5.1bn isk, buying a one month Omega and investing the rest in the business.  Then taking buy the next month Omega the following month from the profits and so on until the end of month 3.  For this to be a better use of the isk i need to work out what the monthly return needs to be - in this case for the 3 month Omega it is 51% each month.