How do I quit my 9-5 and work on my startup fulltime? | Hacker News Reader

How do I quit my 9-5 and work on my startup fulltime?

I've been at a Fortune 500 company for a little over a year now. Got promoted twice, and I am starting to struggle. Not because the job is necessarily difficult but because my heart is else where. I've been working on a side project that's giving signs of life. Spoken with potential customers who came to me with a problem and asked for a solution. I've tried building startups in the past and have failed because my prior projects were solutions in search of problems but this is different. For the first time I feel I have something tangible in my hands. What do I do? How do I go about this?

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Your problem is money. If it's not a problem for a period of a year's time, then pull the pants up and just quit. But you must be sure, it works out. May be try to engage with your customers upfront ("I'll build it for you. Look that's how it could be.. bla bla Marketing and selling speech. Would you like to support the development? ... Otherwise it would take longer, as a full-time job is making the living."

Or, work & work over time on your thing. It'll take longer then, if course, but if it solves an isolated problem - I don't think you'll get much competitors. As long no one knows what you're solving..

I tried to do something while being on regular 9-5-5 job - it's a big big pain and slow as f*. But then I got fired/laid off. Now I'm wasting my time without earning money, as doing my idea doesn't really advance. But some day... Some day...

So, check if you can do everything in your leasure time. If yes, keep your job for money. If money is enough, quit and build. Or, may be you're lucky as me and get laid off..

Keep building your future.

https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ if you need funding, if you don't need funding, spend whatever time you can to get traction/product market fit as fast as you can. When you're not at day job, you're building to reach revenue escape velocity with your own venture so you can move from day job to venture to continue to scale. Make sure you've done your legal homework so your day job can't make any claim to what you're working on.

https://www.startupschool.org/ might also be relevant, free to consume.

What is the side project? Some details would be good, if you want some advice.

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