Side hustling vs. full-time indie hacking: Indie hackers weigh in.

At one time or another, most indie hackers will have to decide whether they want to build a side hustle while employed or get rid of the safety net and go all-in.

If that decision is weighing on you, learn from the experiences of folks who have already been there. 👇

Side-hustlers share their experience

Josh Sherman of Holiday API:
Keeping a job and doing stuff on the side is tough. But it is a time constraint that will ultimately help keep you focused on doing things that matter instead of doing all the things.

I've gone full-time on side-projects twice in the past, leaving 6-figure jobs to do so, and I have every intention of doing it again. It's more of a "when" than an "if".

But the reality is, I probably won't roll the dice again until I'm sitting at $20-30K MRR.

This may not be a popular opinion, but not every side hustle requires 40+ hours a week to grow.

Kyle Nolan of ProjectionLab:
Full-time employment is a de-risking tactic. Having a safety net takes some pressure off, enabling me to think creatively and explore solutions methodically without worrying about survival.

I recently dropped to part-time at my day job after hitting $200k ARR with my side project. Keeping that safety net is nice, but one thing I currently worry about is if my recent shift to part-time is still too conservative. If it turns out I let a promising business die on the vine because I was scared to take the full leap and give it my all, that's something I'll regret.

David Bressler of Formula Bot:
I'm married with two kids. One of the kids is 6 months old and my wife took off the first year. I'm not yet in a position to risk my stable job that feeds the entire family for the side job. Yet...

Working a full-time job and side project is not at all sustainable long-term. I'm actively exploring some options, but I have recently hired a couple of developers to help me while I'm working my FT job. Every morning before I head to work, I message them the deliverables for the day to ensure we're all on the same page.

Geoff Young:
I was working on an ask-an-expert app called Talktree and it was taking a lot more time than I anticipated. So I quit my job.

The goal was to get enough traffic to prove viability. This was in April, 2021. I had $7,000 and two months of rent were already paid for. After two months, I planned on living in a tent for the rest of the summer while building and validating.

But the go-for-broke strategy didn’t work for me. It increased my anxiety which affected my productivity.

Justin Hunt of Poodll:
Moonlight. Definitely. There is no way to tell how long the runway needs to be, and it might be endless if the project doesn't take off.

The first time I did this, I quit my job and had angel investment and we ran out of money and it felt like being disqualified 300m into the 400m race when I was in first place.

The next time, I transitioned first into consulting and just kept working on my product. I eased back on the consulting over time. It took about 4 years till I was full-time on the SaaS product. Source

Full-time indie hackers share their experience

Tony Dinh of TypingMind:
I was making $500/mo. I felt confident that I might actually have a shot at making a living out of Black Magic and DevUtils.

That was when I handed in my notice, officially quitting my job. September 20, 2021 was my last working day and my first day as a full-time indie hacker.

I had savings of 2 years in the bank. If I lived in my hometown in Vietnam, I could have easily gone as far as 4 years without revenue. My backup plan was to just get back to a full-time job if things didn’t work out.

At the time, I didn’t have a family yet, no wife, and no kid. It was the best time for me to make the biggest bet of my life. So I did. Source

Yahia Bakour of Stock Alarm:
When I went full-time, we had 20K MAU and $20K MRR. Ever since I quit, I’ve somehow felt more confident and calm than ever. Even in the face of so much work that needs to be done.

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:
I quit my full-time job last year in August with 24 months of runway. Then I got into consulting and freelancing to offset my salary. For this 6-month period while I'm doing 25 products in 25 weeks, though, I don't have any major clients and by December my runway would be down to around 12-15 months.

I think this is a fair enough number to help me figure out a sustainable business. Anything less than this would have been bad for my mental health, and anything more than this would have made me lazy. I planned and saved for 3 years before I could get to that number of 24 months runway.

Phil McParlane of 4dayweek:
When I was working full-time, I dedicated an hour or two per day to 4dayweek. I decided to go full-time when I started making some sales but didn’t have enough time to spend on the project.

It was scary, but 4dayweek was making about $1,000 per month when I quit and it was growing. And I had about 12 months of runway. Plus, I figured I could probably get a job if it didn’t work out.

Frank Sondors of Salesforge:
I had about a year of runway. I know that building a great business takes time, so I needed to have an extended runway.

Sean Moire of Time Advisor:
I attempted another startup in 2020. It could have been successful, but I burned out juggling it with my full-time job.

My confidence for going all-in this time primarily comes from having 8 months of cash runway for my family’s expenses, assuming $0 MRR for the entirety of that runway. I’m less than a month from launch and any MRR over the next 7 months extends that runway further.

Brad Adkins of Designfly:
I didn't have much of a safety net when I quit my job in March. I only had three months of savings, and I was running out of funds when I started landing my first clients. It was an exciting, yet stressful time. I wouldn’t recommend everyone quit their job with little savings like I did, but I knew it was time for me to spread my wings.

Andris Reinman of EmailEngine:
The main reason I went all-in at $500/mo was that I didn't feel like there was much for me to do in my previous company anymore, and I wanted to take a break of a kind. Other than that, EmailEngine would have worked just as well as a side business. As I sell license key subscriptions, not a service, there is no acute need for me to work on it at all.

I had a runway of one year. And if the business failed, I could always get a regular job.

Hot tips from indie hackers who have been there

Validate your product

Josh Sherman of Holiday API:
I wouldn't suggest that other side-hustlers quit their jobs — not until they've proven that their project can generate some revenue.

Product-market fit is rarely something that comes out of your first iteration, and most (myself included) go full-time with their first iteration. Financial runways are always shorter than you've estimated, so going full-time needs to be a bit more calculated than "I have this idea, and I'm going to pursue it”.

Yahia Bakour of Stock Alarm:
Make sure it’s a validated idea that brings in enough income to cover your expenses. Keep your lifestyle creep in check so you can jump to full-time sooner on a lower MRR. Be ruthless in decisions relating to your startup, cut bloat, keep iterating, and most importantly, enjoy the ride.

Phil McParlane of 4dayweek:
I wouldn’t recommend going all-in immediately, to be honest. I’d build it on the side during evenings and weekends to get an MVP in front of customers. I’d only quit if I had a few sales.

When building a side project, time is limited. So definitely don’t try to perfect your app. Build your first version in No-Code, Wordpress, Webflow, or something simple. In fact, I wouldn’t even build the thing. I'd create a landing page and drive some traffic to it first (e.g. Google Ads, Linkedin DMs etc). Get feedback, and then build it.

On the flip side, if you are a software engineer, I think you can be slightly more liberal as: At the end of the day, if it all goes wrong, you can probably get a job pretty easily. Software developers are in a very lucky position given the market demand.

Build runway

@SeverinFuerte:
Obviously, everyone's situation is going to differ greatly so there's no specific number, but I'd suggest having 12 of months living expenses saved up at the very least. Source

Minh-Phuc Tran of Nora:
Prepare runway. Launch more products than you think you should in the first 6-12 months, then you’ll learn what is a good product and how to make money from it.

Use your runway and reinvest revenue into the business

Phil McParlane of 4dayweek:
If you can afford to, I’d always say reinvest it in the business. Grow it as fast as you can.

In the long-term it works out to be more profitable. For example, if you can add $1k of extra revenue per month, this equates to $12k per year. If you ever decided to sell the business (say at a valuation of 5x annual revenue), this extra $1k per month would equal $60k in additional sale value.

Keep costs low

Yahia Bakour of Stock Alarm:
Keep your lifestyle creep in check so you can jump to full-time sooner on a lower MRR.

Have a Plan B (and a Plan C)

Josh Sherman of Holiday API:
When you do it, have a Plan B… and C. Obviously Plan A is that everything goes perfect, you find product market fit immediately, and you grow to a bajillion users and retire on your yacht post-IPO.

When that doesn't happen, at least for me, Plan B is to freelance to gap-fill income while still trying to focus on the side-project.

Plan C is to acknowledge the failure and get a job. While I've kept some projects alive after going back to employment, they tend to not last forever.

Cut back to part-time before going all-in

Kyle Nolan of ProjectionLab:
I just dropped to part-time at my day job after hitting $200k ARR with my side project

I'm lucky to work at a company that's flexible and supportive, and I've been transparent with them about my side project from the beginning. So it was actually just a normal conversation, and the switch to part-time was essentially the push of a button.

Phil McParlane of 4dayweek:
I initially dropped down to 3 days per week at my day job, before finally quitting in February 2022.

Cutting down was much easier than I expected! I just asked my boss and he said yes. But I think the key is to only ask to cut your hours after 1 or 2 years of good work. At that point, from the employer's perspective, it will be more effort to replace you, so it’s in their interest to retain you by offering you a part-time contract.

Sean Moire of Time Advisor:
The CTO at my current company and I negotiated a plan for me to work part-time October 1 through December 1, or until my role is backfilled. If it's backfilled in September, I could be full-time indie hacking by October.

Having a smooth transition was important to maintain a good connection with the CTO who has unlocked a lot of entrepreneurial connections for me. It also extends my runway.

Make sure you have a very good reason for going all-in

Josh Sherman of Holiday API:
Think about the underlying reasons you want to quit your job and go full-time on your project.

Are you dissatisfied with your job? Find a new job.

Do you think you don't have enough time with your full-time job for your side project? Take inventory on how you currently spend your time, and cut out the unnecessary bits first.

While there are some success stories, most startups are doomed from the start. It's not being defeatist to go in knowing you have an uphill battle, and thus, you should think about how you can operate in such a way that will allow you to do your best work, which oftentimes means cutting out television or video game time instead of just quitting your job to find that extra time to devote towards your project.

Don't listen to get caught up in the hype

David Bressler of Formula Bot:
Don't follow what other people are doing. A lot of people, especially on social media, talk about how they risked everything to go all-in on their startup. That's easier to do when you're 20 with no kids or a full-time job.

Think about your situation. There are 24 hours in the day. You sleep ~1/3 of them and work for another 1/3. There's still a 1/3 of the day remaining. You can make it work. Small incremental changes every day can lead to a big impact.

Andris Reinman of EmailEngine:
I was only able to go all-in because I could afford it. I wouldn't suggest the same approach for others.

Tony Dinh of TypingMind:
I always tell people not to quit their jobs without a stable revenue each month, a lot of savings, and backup plans.

It depends on your circumstances

Yahia Bakour of Stock Alarm:
In my opinion, the right time to take the leap depends on where you are in life. If you’re in your early 20s, have a year or two of industry experience, and a product with some decent MRR and growth potential, then going full-time makes perfect sense. However, if you’ve got kids, then your side-hustle needs to be more mature and make a higher MRR over a longer period of time to ease some of that risk.

Enjoy the ride

Yahia Bakour of Stock Alarm:
Be ruthless in decisions relating to your startup, cut bloat, keep iterating, and most importantly, enjoy the ride.

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