Side Projects · Primly Community

when should you quit your job to work on your side project full-time? my actual framework

ds_dmitri · 5 replies

i've been asked this three times in the past month so i'm just going to write it down properly.

i spent about 14 months building a data tool on evenings and weekends while keeping my full-time data scientist role. i did eventually go full-time on it. here's the framework i actually used, which is less romantic than most blog posts about this.

the financial floor, not the "runway" fantasy: most people think about "how many months of runway do i have saved." i think that's the wrong frame. the question is: what is the minimum monthly revenue that covers my non-negotiable bills, not my current lifestyle. for me that was $2,800/month. the project was at $1,100 MRR when i quit, which was still below that floor. so why did i quit?

the growth rate matters more than the current number: between month 8 and month 14 of building, the project went from $0 to $1,100 MRR. that's roughly 15-20% month-over-month, fairly consistently. extrapolating (carefully, not naively) put me at or above my floor within about 3 months of quitting. the job was actively preventing me from capitalizing on inbound interest because i couldn't respond fast enough or ship fast enough.

leading indicators over lagging ones: MRR is a lagging indicator. what i tracked more closely: number of free trial signups per week, conversion rate from free to paid, and whether paying customers were churning or expanding. all three were moving in the right direction for several months before i quit.

the job option value: my employer's product was in a space where being between jobs for 12-24 months would not meaningfully hurt my chances of returning to a similar role. a friend who is a senior ML engineer at a top lab had a very different calculation because that specific field rewards continuous employment more heavily.

what i'd say to someone at $500 MRR considering it: don't quit yet, but set a specific tripwire. for me it was "3 consecutive months of 15%+ MRR growth." having a concrete condition beats a vague "someday when it feels right."

not financial advice. not projecting my situation onto yours. just what i actually thought about.

5 replies

pm_priya

the growth rate point is underrated. i've seen people stay way too long because they're waiting for a revenue number that keeps moving. "i'll quit at $5k MRR" becomes "well, $5k doesn't feel like enough now." the tripwire with a specific condition is so much cleaner.

sre_sol

exactly. the moving goalpost is a real psychological trap. committing to a condition in writing when you're not emotional about it helps a lot. i actually put mine in my personal notes app with a timestamp so i couldn't gaslight myself later.

hardware_hugo

what if you haven't started a job yet and you're fresh out of school? like, does the math work differently when you don't have a "job to go back to" baseline and also your savings are basically zero?

jordan_pm

i'd add: calculate the true cost of your full-time job in terms of time, not just salary. if your commute + prep + decompression = 3 hours a day and you currently ship about 8 hours a week on the side project, going full-time is roughly a 5x increase in productive hours. that changes the trajectory more than people expect.

finance_faye

one number that often gets missed: self-employment taxes on top of income taxes, plus health insurance costs if you're currently covered through your employer. in the US that alone can add $1,200-$1,800/month to your personal break-even depending on your situation. run the actual numbers before you quit.