Everyone says 'make 2x your salary before you quit.' I heard that for years. But that framing never made sense to me, because it ignores the variance.
Here's how I actually thought about it when I left my full-time role three months ago to go all-in on my tool.
The actual calculation I ran:
My salary was $130k. My side project was pulling in ~$4,200/month in recurring revenue and had been growing about 8-12% month over month for 6 months. That's $50k annualized. Not 2x. Not even half.
But I also looked at: what could I build in the next 4 months if I had 40 hours a week instead of 6? The features I couldn't ship were exactly the features that would close the next tier of customers. That calculation -- opportunity cost of staying -- is what people skip.
Other things I checked before deciding: 12 months of personal runway (rent, food, insurance, taxes, not just 'living expenses' in some abstract sense) Whether the revenue had been stable for at least 4 months with no one customer over 25% Whether I had something concrete to build next, not just 'keep growing'
I did not meet the 2x rule. I left anyway. The reasoning was that the business was early-product-market-fit stage and I was the bottleneck. Every month I stayed was a month the churn curve could eat the growth.
Three months out, MRR is at $7,400. Could easily be bad luck or good luck on top of that decision. Not enough data yet.
If you're trying to answer this question for yourself: the revenue threshold is less important than understanding specifically what you'd do with the time. If you don't have a clear list of 5-10 high-leverage things that need building, don't quit. You'll just be anxious with more hours.