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13 Comments

Quitting My £40k a year dev job to start a business - AMA

Hi guys!

For those who don’t know, I’m a software engineer living in Norwich (in the U.K.) and I’ve just quit my job to focus on pursuing a startup!

Some have called me crazy, others have called me brave, but generally everyone thinks I’m just nuts 😂

I’ve spoken more about it on the first of my weekly thought posts here -> https://maxandreassen.com.

Feel free to ask me anything about why and how I’ve done this! 🚀

AMA

  1. 2

    Been there done that, but now I regret it. My journey will be lot easier if I have $40K job. But, good luck with your journey

    1. 1

      I’ve heard similar stories from a few people. It’s probably this that earns me the title of ‘Madman’ in my post!

      I hope things work out for you on your journey and thank you for the good wishes for mine! 😊

  2. 2

    I wish I would have done something like that in my 22. For better or worse, you've done the right thing.

    1. 1

      Thank you Daniel!

      It’s definitely a big leap, but I think what gave me the confidence to do it is the fact that I’m 100% prepared to fail, and then learn from that failure to go again if I do.

      Knowing that failure is okay, but whilst still aiming for success, removes a lot of the anxiety and lets me focus purely on execution.

      1. 1

        When you prepare for the worst it always end up well ;)

  3. 2

    Just read your blog - sounds cool. Good for you!

    I'll kick this off with some questions:

    • How much runway have you given yourself? I.e. how long until you're out of savings?
    • What prep work did you do for the product before leaving Pickr?
    • How long do you think it would take realistically to make up your 40k salary with your new business?

    All the best,

    Sub

    1. 1

      Hey Sub, glad you liked it!

      • £45k savings which gives me a 2 year run way after bills and what I’ve allocated to startup costs. This has room to grow or shrink based on how much of my lifestyle I sacrifice though (e.g. eating noodles everyday 😂)

      • Predominantly idea validation and initial customer on boarding (sign up with a commitment to pay) of at least one larger customer before leaving Pickr. I’d also built a small MVP with basic user auth and stripe payments as a proof of concept before leaving.

      • That’s quite a tough question to answer but I’ll try to break it down. My Pickr monthly take home before tax was £3500. If I compare this what the customer mentioned above has committed to pay then I’ll need about 18 customers to match my previous take home salary in revenue. Obviously there’s other costs involved that I would bet have as an employee so let’s boost that up to 20 customers for a bit of leeway.

      If I assume I can onboard 1 new customer a month then it’ll take me 19 months (excluded the initial customer) to match my previous take home salary.

      Thanks for the questions! 😊

      1. 1

        Sounds great. Good luck!!!

  4. 2

    So what kind of business are you going to build? What is your plan?

    Good luck on your journey!

    1. 1

      Hey, thanks for the question!

      I’m building a platform enabling sports competition organisers (both eSports and real sports) to organise tournaments, leagues and more. It allows them to collect payments online in a hassle free way, as well automating a lot of the boring admin work involved.

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