10 reasons why I shouldn’t have left my job to launch Scribbl.co
- 4 months in... $40k has evaporated from my savings
- Health insurance for my wife, my two kids, and myself.... $1,700+/month
- Our company is bootstrapped
- My cofounder who is building the product has a full-time job
- Its been a month since launching and we have 3 customers paying less then $200/month... that $10k+ less then what I could have earned at my job.
- I can’t code
- My wife wants a house
- Not certain when the business will be in a place financially where I can draw a salary
- The hours I work per day has dramatically increased
- My life would be a lot easier
1 reason why I wouldn’t change my decision for anything.
In this moment and every moment that comes while I am in this space.... I am FREE.
On the bright side you are getting $200/mo with only 3 customers. That's about $60/mo per person or about $720 per year per person! That's a lot of money IMO for an individual to pay for just your MVP. So clearly whatever you built is justified and people are getting value out of it. You're on to something. It seems like you need to go very hard on sales and advertising and then you'll be good... Sucks that you have so many dependents so what you do affects other people. It may be worth it to go work part time somewhere if your startup will take less time in the near future, just for some immediate cash flow. Good luck!!
Thanks for the feedback!
"In this moment and every moment that comes while I am in this space.... I am FREE."
Especially if your wife leaves you :(
You need to expand on your business model for the software. Come up with another use, like selling to politicians to use to make a transcript of their phone conversations.
🙏 Yep, you get it.
🙌
It's hard to put a price tag on golden handcuffs but at least you had the courage to take action, most can't. Check out the @dvassallo story, he quit a job at AWS where he had a salary of over $500k where he had no complaints with his job or employer, just to work on his own projects. It doesn't look like a wise move in the short term but he's a smart guy and I'm willing to bet money that his move will pay off in many ways including financial, soon enough. There's no better time for sharp, hard working people to swing for the fences. Don't sweat the petty.
You did the noble thing by being honest with your employer and quitting. When you're in a technical role, as long as the expectations are clear, agreed upon, and met, it's easier to be fair since you have clear deliverables with due dates.
Thank you for this response!
...is this in US dollars?
Yes
"4 months in... $40k has evaporated from my savings"
Damn, you might have a hole somewhere...
Hahaha... it's less of a hole and more of a lifestyle that I am extremely grateful that I have had the opportunity to create for my family.
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This post is the first post I ever put into the world that exposed really personal details about my life. I put it out there to see what would happen.
So I open to whatever you feel you want to share.
Thanks for responding!
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What are you currently working on?
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I appreciate the feedback.
I quit my job because I was extremely unhappy. It wasn't the job that made me unhappy it was really my belief that in order for me to reach my goals I need to invest my time building something that can earn me money while I sleep. I felt I wasn't spending my time doing the things that called me.
Yes I do believe that. We are in month 1. I will update you in 4 months.
I am fortunately in a space where I can afford the investment in myself and give my family the same quality of life. The only reason I am able to afford this is because I successfully excited my first company doorofclubs.com a few years back.
Thanks again for your thoughts and feedback!
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It started out with a problem I had as a software sales rep.
Before we started developing the product we conducted about 100 surveys to gain some validation.
From these survey's we concluded that my problem wasn't unique to me but others faced it.
From there we built a stripped down version of what we imagined would be a solution and began testing with an initial group of 3 sales reps.
That group grew to 20 as we further developed the product.
The process above spanned over 10 months.
We launched the product this month and 3 out of the 20 beta testers decided to pay for subscriptions.
We initially targeted software sales people as that's the role I was in and they universally have the problem of capturing important information during sales calls. Although we have validated that reps will pay out of pocket for our solution, we aren't certain that they are "screaming loud enough" that they need it. It isn't ruled as we still are at an early stage but it's definitely something we are focused on addressing.
We are learning that there may be a more natural use case with Product Managers who conduct 1:1 customer interviews for the purposes of sharing insights with engineering teams. This came about because a product manager started using our tool. One of the things that was interesting is he shared sound bites he created from our tool within his companies internal wiki. We plan to explore this persona and use case further.
Do you have any suggestions?