Build my own startup or continue the high paying job?

Build your project on the side and until it has enough revenue for you to live from; don't quit your day job. Startup life is overly romanticized. Dip your toes in by working your day job 40 hours and an extra 20 hours for your side hustle. Do this for a few months, and if you think you can keep the schedule up without a salary and it's worth it to feed your dream then hop in and good luck!

"building something of my own has been consuming me lately."

How bad is it consuming you lately ? Do you think about this every day ? Do you feel like if you don't do something about this, you would be very unhappy say 5 years from now ?

Let me be brutally honest hoping it helps. Most people think about doing this own thing since it is a "nice idea". But the execution part is where a lot of us fail.

So the question is: what are you willing to give up today to start something of your own ? Are you willing to give up the salary cushion you have ? Are you willing to grind day in day out for 5/7/10 years ?

Let's say you do your own thing today and 5 years from now, you decide that it is not for you and you want to go back to a job. Would you regret your decision in hindsight ? Would you hate yourself for losing all that cash you could have made in 5 more years from your current job ?

For me, the answer is No, not at all. I did not fail so you can call it survivorship bias but 7 years ago, I quit my very high paying consulting job to do my own thing. I was able to make it work but even if I had failed, I would have 0 regrets. I cannot die knowing that I never tried my own thing. Can you ?

I went through this, so I am answering from experience. It was over 15 years ago though, so take it with a grain of salt.

First of all, how much do you love money and the luxuries it affords? I went from a well paid engineer spending freely on whatever I wanted straight back to living with my parents and eating my mom's cooking. I had savings but did not touch them - they were for emergencies, especially medical ones: I had no insurance. Took me 3 years to go back to making some money, and 5 to be comparable to the original level.

Secondly, how are the people around you? I was lucky to be partially understood and not discouraged by my parents and girlfriend and accepted by my friends. Without that I would’ve quit pretty fast.

Third, do you have an actual idea for a product? You need to be in love with that idea, not with the idea of being an entrepreneur.

Finally, how much do you love sales? You’ll get nowhere without them.

Now, if you answered yes to all above, don’t convince me. Go ahead and convince a cofounder. Work together in your spare time (plus a vacation or sabbatical) a few months and build a proof of concept. Then convince an investor for some seed money for a first hire.

Then and only then you can decide to go ahead and build your own startup…

Remember: you can get anything you want in life. But everything has a price. The trick is to really understand that price. The question is: Are you really ready to pay the price?

If you are living in the Bay Area, do not quit your job unless you have enough money to keep your own lifestyle in perpetuity.

I have so many friends that have regretted going into startups because they have missed out on literally millions.

If you don’t have a house right now, do not go into a startup because the ones in big companies will earn more money than you and you will effectively take a break in making money for years.

Of course you might work at the next Uber, but chances are 10 to 1 that you will instead work at the next Juicero. The 5 years you dedicate to that job will see no money but the stock market will rise and you won’t see any of that so your peers will get richer and richer.

So if you have a house and enough money to keep your lifestyle no matter what, then sure. Go for it. If you don’t, then wait until you have enough. Or if you don’t care about money and are okay with things like housing being completely out of reach then that’s okay too.

Not having money would also probably consume you.

If you have to ask some strangers on HN what to do with your life, you’re almost guaranteed to not be ready.

You’re going to have basic questions about setting up your business, insurance, contracts, payroll and HR, vendors, before you even get to your business idea.

If you don’t have that all sorted out, you’re not even in the right place yet. You’ve got some homework to do before you even take any sort of dive.

Maybe you’ve started a business before and don’t need to hear this, but from what I can tell, you haven’t and startups are not typical small businesses.

If you don’t know how to run a simple small business before attempting to run a startup, you’re going to have a bad time.

Also, I don’t know who is going to take you seriously in fundraising.

everyone saying to build on the side probably hasn't built or shipped anything on the side. building on the side: - hard to think deeply or carve out deep work for side project when work + life keeps interrupting - hard to make progress if project is ambitious given time constraints - enthusiasm can fade due to interruptions

if you have a very high conviction and high savings, the best would be to jump into it. the thing with leaving your job is you can always find another one

I made this jump in 2019. To some of the points made here:

1. You need to understand why you want to do a startup. "Building something of my own...": why do you want to do that? Why is that important to you?

2. Find a problem (market) you love, not a solution (product). You will be working on that problem for the next 10 years.

3. Talk to startup founders who have failed. There is a lot of celebrated romanticism of successful founders. 90%+ of startups fail though. Those failed folks are pretty smart and capable, but it's an uphill battle. If you've typically succeeded at tasks you set out at, startupland can be a big ego hit.

4. Is there a hybrid approach? One failed startup founder I know decided to work at Amazon after and try to grow a division there. He was successful in that. He took it from <$10MM to >$100MM as a GM. Zero to one is hard.

5. There's a lot of unglamourous stuff. e.g., all things legal and finance. If/when you hire people, you need to also focus on management and growing your folks.

I actually disagree with most of the advice here counseling you not to quit.

It sounds like you would be able to find a similar job with similar income if you quit, tried to start your own project, failed, and re-entered the work force.

If you are at a life stage where the opportunity cost of trying to start a company for a year is approximately one year of salary, then I would try it.

Unless you have dependents/need a steady income, then it is probably too risk-averse not to try collecting new experiences.

A strong suggestion: I would find a cofounder or someone else to work with before quitting or trying a startup on your own.

Basically: if you are secure in a high income bracket, you might want to optimize more for exposure to positive, exciting opportunities, rather than play super-conservatively in a way that minimizes variance, may or may not maximize expected value, but certainly eliminates exciting upside.

> I also do not have anything to complain about my job, my manager or my company

This is gold, Even as someone who is very risk-seeking I'm not sure I would want to give this up, until I was truly ready to break out on my own, fully independent, AND have a war chest to play around with startups. However, you might have a different risk tolerance and appetite as me, or, maybe there's nothing to complain about and that's why it's boring. With that in mind:

> Within 8 years my salary has grown 8x

If you're in tech and have had that trajectory, why not pay someone to work on your startup?

Have you read about other famous startup founders that left high-paying jobs? Examples:

- Jeff Bezos quits prestigious job at David Shaw hedge fund to start Amazon

- Jensen Huang at age 30 quits his director job at LSI Logic to start NVIDIA

- Eric Yuan quits his VP of Engineering job at Cisco to start Zoom

Is your conviction for "building something of my own" as compelling as theirs? Is your software idea so motivational that you're also willing to work 90-hour weeks including weekends every week to help get the business going?

At the risk of an HN forum like this doing armchair psychology on your level of commitment... the following quote from your other reply is a red flag: "My biggest dilemma is financial outcomes. With my job, I have a guaranteed path for good financial outcomes..."

For many successful founders, their biggest dilemma was not starting the business to build their idea instead of worrying about a comfortable salaried job paying better in the future. In other words, a startup founder is a little it irrational in choosing to build a startup because statistically, the expected financial outcome is likely failure and bankruptcy. The irrational startup founder doesn't care because must build his software idea to see if it works.

I would recommend you stay in the high paying job. Being a big tech employee is worlds apart from running your own company. And it seems like it is a strength of yours to work in that environment. Running a startup for you is like starting at zero again. Not a lot of people can do it successfully and it takes times. You have to have a strong passion to start a company and I just don't see it if you have to ask.

What does your savings situation look like? If your income went to $0, how long could you comfortably continue living without withdrawing from tax-advantaged retirement accounts or otherwise drawing down on your savings more than you’d like? Don’t assume you’ll cut expenses or be frugal to extend your runway. Use your current spending to calculate this.

Second, do you have an actual startup idea to work on right away? Or do you simply want to do anything that comes to mind? In my experience, it’s much easier to get started and follow through when you’re targeting a specific, known goal. I’ve seen people jump into “doing a startup” without an actual goal in mind. They spend a lot of time spinning their wheels and pivoting over and over again. I’d suggest nailing down the business idea before you leap.

Third, consider finding business partners first. Solo entrepreneurship is extremely hard and can be very lonely. It’s much easier to work in pairs or a group of 3 founders.

Build an open source toy project from start to finish in your spare time and beg people to use it. You will scratch your itch

> building something of my own

What prevents you from doing this right now? At nights and/or on weekends, building your own thing(s)? IP assignment agreement? Lack of time or energy?

My suggestion would be to start now. Start programming things. Most of the Y-Combinator advice seems to be to let the project dictate making a startup as opposed to starting a startup because you want to start a startup.

Also, keeping in mind your IP assignment agreements at work, go to your accountant and open up an S-corp or LLC. If you are very ambitious and want to get angel funding etc., start a Delaware corporation - there is plenty of advice here how to do so. I myself have an S-corp in my state, because I am not working on anything at the moment that I foresee eventually trying to raise venture capital for.

Again, keeping your IP assignments in mind - why not launch while still working? Work your day job during the day and do the side gig at night.

I would recommend doing your best to try and figure out a way to not leave your job completely, yet still give yourself the time you need to build something without completely relying on doing it on the side. Can you cut your time back to 4 days a week, and work on your start up on the 5th day? Can you take a sabbatical for a month or two so that you can dive deep on building something without having to completely leave your job?

I would assume that if you're that successful that your company would be willing to give you some flexibility as opposed to you just outright leaving, and that you have the financial means to do so. Rather than having this be an all or nothing thing, figure out a way to leverage some flexibility to build while maintaining some connection to your current job/position/company.

Why should you be the one building it? Why not take a chunk of the 8x salary, find a person to execute first year or so of the idea? Once it's direction is clear, you can jump full time to it. I understand the other person might not be passionate but atleast he will be your employee.

A better question is who depends upon you? Are you single? Married with children? It isn't just you when this discussion comes up. If you drop your job to pursue a pegasus, are you the only one without health insurance, dental etc??? Do it on the side if you do it all. I've been broke all my life and while I wouldn't have pursued the two most logical paths to better money because I believed they would not have made me a better person, I cannot advocate for someone giving up the means that comes with a successful career. I think you should keep your job, bank as much money as possible and scratch your itch in your off hours and on weekends. Just my half penny. HTH

Build it on the side (if your employment contract allows for it, by not claiming all IP you build belongs to your employer).

It'll be slower, it'll take you nights and weekends, but in my book that beats the desperate hustle for cash you have when you've got 0 revenue.

By building it as a side project you can pull the trigger once you get some traction.

As a tech person, you probably hadn't had much experience with marketing, sales, business development, company paperwork/taxes .. all important stuff that will sink your startup if not done well. If you're doing this on the side, you've more time to learn the chops in those areas.

Grass is always greener on the other side, don't let that blind you to the grind.

Since you are debating whether to let go 100% of your salary for your startup, you can also think about how much % you are willing to invest in your startup for getting outside help (yes, even for coding). This route is often completely ignored by founders but if you get freelancers/contractors from the right geography, you might end up speeding up your project more than if you spent 100% time on it.

Many new founders don't think of this route because they usually have a individual contributor role in their full-time job and don't appreciate the productivity scalability in managing others.

If you think you have an idea worth pursuing, work on it on the side while keeping your "day job". If it takes off, quit your job once you can replace your income with the side work. Also, as a warning - double check your intellectual property agreement with your employer. Some employers will draft them so as to read that ANY idea you come up with (either related to their business or not, just because you work for them) is automagically THEIR intellectual property. Needless to say, this not a good position for your new brilliant start-up to be in.

You should absolutely do it. Chances are the startup won't be successful, but it's a life experience you won't regret having.

Start building something on the side, and make sure you have enough savings to maintain your life without getting paid for a while. Once you have some traction, you should be able to raise money and hopefully pay yourself a reasonable salary.

If you do fail, you shouldn't have any problems getting re-hired. Sounds like you've been successful in your career so far, and the skills you learn as a founder will only make you more valuable.

If you've been working at the same company for a while, ask your HR department if they have a policy around a leave of absence or a sabbatical! You can take a few months off to build a prototype of your idea, test it out with some users, and then decide whether to return to your day job or continue with your startup idea full time.

This will be much less risky than quitting your high-paying job and going all-in on a startup idea. Many startups fail for a variety of reasons, besides just poor execution.

Whatever you plan to do, make sure you have a backup plan.

I recently left my job so I could contract to pay the rent and work on my own ideas.

I've had a number of connections who have done this and of course there are more famous cases like Basecamp.

There's not as much risk and there's no fear about IP. You also don't need to do all the extracurricular worrying about employer product, org direction and dealing with on call.

The hardest part I anticipate is just getting depressed from not being able to make progress fast enough. That or not having enough human/coworker interaction, which is a big deal for me.

I think the drive to do something like this will not be with you forever. Once you are in your thirties you will probably want to prioritize your (potential) family life and will not have time or inclination or freedom to pour yourself into a start-up. So if you have no current commitments/responsibilities outside work, and there's a good job market for your skills to fall back on later, I suppose it's now or never. Even if it fails I'm sure you'd learn a lot.

Been there and back. Quit a high-paying but crappy job together with my cofounder to do our own thing. In hindsight we were so naive and unprepared. After 8 months I was lucky to find a part-time staff-aug contract, so I'm doing that now while continuing on one of the products that got some traction. This was even with plenty of money still in the bank, as I felt we weren't really going anywhere at that point... Some thoughts:

- A high paying job with good environment which you don't dislike is very, very valuable. Lots of folks will say you can get another job again if needed, but you're starting from scratch again in terms of clout, and it's hard to judge company culture from interviews so you might get a worse environment

- The opportunity cost is very real, both in terms of what you’re leaving on the table and what the profitability bar of your business will be. It would’ve been easier if my full-time job only paid $50k.

- If you wanna take a shot at it, REALLY commit to it instead of half-assing it. That way when it's all said and done you can sleep well knowing you gave it a good run. (That said, still advise trying to find product-market fit and figuring out the X's and O's part of running a business while you're still employed)

- What course and decision is best for you will be VERY personal. This is one of my biggest takeaways from my time. It’s as much a journey of figuring out your limitations and yourself as a person as it is about the business side and product.

- My "it" moment was when I got a pang of extreme jealousy when a friend told me he got a first major customer for his side product.

- IMO next to having a partner and child, creating and running your own business is one of the most special life experiences you can have. It’s what I think about most of the time when I’m not working, and getting new customers / validation feels so much better than anything I can experience at work. I also truly enjoy the creative side of it, where the world's your oyster and you’re free to do literally anything you can fathom to grow the business.

- Know what your end goal is. Personally I’d enjoy the day-to-day of running a lifestyle business I could live off of because I’ve gotten to the point where I’m ambivalent about regular software dev work. But that’s just me.

Everything had tradeoffs. Don’t think of this as a binary “work vs startup” decision. Instead, take some time to think about what tradeoffs you’d be making in other areas of your life. For example, 0 income could affect your decision on how often to eat out, going solo means taking on all support issues which can affect your social life. No one can answer this question for you, but the collective wisdom here can help you ask yourself the right questions.

> Within 8 years my salary has grown 8x, I am often one of the highest paid people in most gatherings/social circles and having seen what not having any money looks like, it's a scary prospect to let go of a hard-earned high paying and stable job.

> I also do not have anything to complain about my job, my manager or my company. I have had a lot of support from everyone at work which has helped me grow as fast as I did.

Why would you ever leave?

Keep the job until you’ll no longer be asking this question.

Keep your job, hire freelancers to build the MVP, reduce your working hours once you confirmed the market fit with a few customers, switch to consultancy or part-time job when your startup makes enough money to pay your bills for at least 6 months in a row, quit your job when your startup makes enough money to make you happy but you feel it needs to grow faster than before.

> How should I decide which path to take?

I've been in exactly this place (big salary in big tech, started my own company). I find that these types of decisions are complex, I don't think I could capture everything in a comment, but I''d be happy to throw 30 mins on my calendar for a Zoom (9-5). Shoot me a DM on Twitter (@MattLovesMath) or LinkedIn if you'd like to.

Both.

Build it on the side: evenings and weekends on your own equipment NOT at the employer.

Get undeniable traction (preferably sales and investment) before working-out a resignation and continuity plan with your employer.

Good employers (managers with rational egos and empathy) should want you back if it doesn't work out because you're a known quantity.

Do NOT burn your ships (or bridges) behind you like Cortés.

Your fifth startup will be successful. First four will not. So, save money on first four startups for the fifth one, e.g. commit 10k for a first startup and try to make it profitable first (you will fail with probability of 99.9%), then commit 20k for a second one, and so on. Don't leave your job until a fourth startup at least.

Entrepreneurship is a... special kind of mindset. You have to basically trick yourself into believing that you unconditionally love a project that will hurt like nothing else ever has. Most people don't come out the other side the same, so you should be wary of throwing away a comfortable position.

Stay in the high paying job, save, retire, do hobbies.

Alternative: Work really hard for almost no money. If it goes well, you can make close to your engineering salary again as a founder. If you "win the lottery" you get an exit and get to retire and do hobbies.

I assume you work 5 days a week? Can you not go to 4 days a week and spend 1 day working on your side project full time until it has enough merit? If you do, make your day a Wednesday, not a Friday, otherwise it just becomes part of the weekend.

Thank you everyone for your comments. These have been very very helpful and I think I have a better idea of what I should do. Appreciate you taking the time and helping me out!

Do you have the option to go on a leave of absence? I have friends who have done this to work on their own ideas or go traveling for an undetermined amount of time.

What is your startup?

What appeals to you about a startup?

How much are you paid?