What Did Derek Sivers Do With $22 Million?

In 2008, Derek Sivers sold CD Baby — the music distribution company he'd built in his bedroom — for $22 million.

He gave it all away.

Not some of it. All of it. He set up a charitable trust for music education and transferred the entire sale into it, keeping nothing for himself. His reasoning was simple: 'I didn't need it. The mission needed it.'

He had started CD Baby as a musician who just wanted to sell his own CD. He never planned to become wealthy. When the wealth arrived, he looked at it and decided it didn't change anything about what actually mattered.

He still lives simply. No mansion, no staff, no empire-building. He moves between countries with everything he owns in a bag, writes, thinks, and helps musicians.

There's a freedom in that decision most people never reach — not because they can't afford to, but because they've never asked the question: what is this actually for?

Sivers asked it. Then he answered it.