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Comment by toujourscurieux | Hacker News Reader

My current savings give me a runway of about 2 years with the current lifestyle, if my income went to zero tomorrow. I have been saving for this for the last year or so and would have a runway for 4 years if I continue my job for another year.

I do, I have been validating my idea and have enough to put a pitch deck together. I get commits from the first 3 potential customers as well, to create a strong case for the business.

Yes, I have some potential partners.

My biggest dilemma is financial outcomes. With my job, I have a guaranteed path for good financial outcomes (a million in savings or more, conservatively speaking) if I stick it out for another 5-8 years. But is giving this up a good path? I could make a lot more or nothing at all.

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If I were you, I'd do the following: live frugally and continue your career until you reach a point where you can safely and comfortably retire. Look into FIRE (financial independence, retire early) communities and resources for more info. Once you reach that point, do whatever you want because the money no longer matters. Especially if you are okay with your current job, I personally wouldn't throw such a great position away just to gamble on a personal business. If it's really consuming you that much, just do it on the side. If you can't keep up your current job and get your business started in your free time, I personally don't think you'll have what it takes to power through the business anyway.

If financial outcomes are your biggest dilemma, you gave yourself the answer.

Let me tell you from someone who's in the twilight between "I should go back to a job" and "I can see how this project is going to increase my lifetime earnings compared to a conservative job": It's not cool. I was in a lesser earnings situation than you, still 3-4X what I make now building a venture.

It's a mental marathon and you need to operate and execute despite that. If money is your single biggest motivator/ driver (nothing wrong with that, it's preeeetty high up for me), the ride will be quite rough I think.

Thinking you or I will be the exception to this rule is rather delusional. The best thing I would suggest is to try and leverage your skillset by getting into a team early when others already have de-risked the idea a bit. Requires quite good networking, though, of course.

If you want a "safer" financial outcome, quitting your job and starting your own thing is NOT the answer.

If you can do your product without raising money by actually making sales (bootstrapping) and making a profit every month, then this is more "safer" than raising money as you will lose control over your financial outcome. The successful ones (there are not a lot) get a lot of press but there are a lot more failures with raising money and then figuring out profit

Your cost of living sounds kind of high if you only have a 2 year runway on your current high salary. If you reduce it a bit, it wouldn't be hard to have a savings rate of at least 50%. You could read the "Early Retirement Extreme" book or check out mrmoneymustache.com blog posts sometime.

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