Took the leap, quit my job
Hello IH
I've got significant personal news to share. I've just quit my Job as a SWE at Amazon to take a leap of faith as a full-time founder for StockAlarm.io !
To say it was an easy decision would be a lie, it's a little scary downright nerve-wracking to leave a well paying cushy corporate gig in today's "we're about to enter a recession" economy to fully pursue a side-project turned startup.
Lots of folks in both my personal and professional circles have asked me why i would do this, and through much thought i've come up with a half decent answer. I could pursue more money in big tech however i realize how privileged i am to be 23 with no debt and no kids, essentially I'm at a point in my life where i have the least amount of reasons NOT to do this.
Today marked my first day and It's definitely a strange feeling to wake up and work on your own project full time. It's liberating to be able to dictate your own schedule without being at the mercy of a million meetings others set on your calendar. Although this extreme freedom does come with the responsibility of knowing you own your failures end to end so that's a nice jolt to your motivation.
Overall i'm super pumped to see where this journey takes me and i wanted to thank you for that extra motivation boost i get whenever i read some of the other similar stories on here.
In 2018, I was in your position.
I have many potential customers, excellent ideas, and excellent apps. I then come to the realization that I have no knowledge of pricing, sales, or marketing. I hope you are clear about: to whom will you sell? what will you sell? how will you sell?
I wasn't.
Did you teach yourself pricing, sales, and marketing? If so, what resources were most effective?
So I've read:
These books cover completely different topics but nowadays I come to a point that, storytelling is effective in marketing so in Twitter and LinkedIn. So you can read "Sell with a Story", "The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell", "Building a StoryBrand".
By the way, the most effective was Selcuk Can Guven's podcast.
https://open.spotify.com/show/2NQZF7yOjIpLfi86lLPAVg?si=9ffad1b2168c4928
https://twitter.com/scguven
Unfortunately, it is only Turkish.
My second best effective podcast would be Marketing Made Simple by Storybrand.
https://open.spotify.com/show/3bY7mpb0h8z1N2RT03pM3Q?si=49ffe2fa7d984861
Here are a few key points.
Bye.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'll checkout these resources!
Let’s gooo!
I see you @rgmvisser, congrats guys it's so nice to cross paths again on a different platform :) Long life to StockAlarm <3
@abebe11 good to see you here too!!
What is this, a cross-over episode?
Haha didn’t know you were all hanging out here. New favorite spot in town.
Welcome to the party
Happy hour anyone?
Feel free to tag along :P
Congrats! @yahiabakour.
A good move considering you want to pursue being an indie & the fact it is already at $20K MRR.
Neat step. All the very best.
Thank you! Yup the fact it's already at a healthy MRR made the decision easier for sure :D
Enjoy the new chapter in your life
Congrats on making such a big decision. It is also my dream not to be at the mercy of someone else. That's why I started working on spellblaze.com, but it is still a work in progress.
Took a look at spellblaze.com, cool idea! Might want to make that hero statement a little more concise though as it took me a bit to digest :D
Thanks a ton! It's definitely a great feeling
Thanks a lot for the fantastic feedback; I have been working on an update for the landing page and just pushed it. I would appreciate it if you could check it out and get your feedback. Thanks.
link: spellblaze.com
Congrats and good luck, Yahia.
I quit in June and it's been quite an interesting journey.
Thank you! Did you quit to pursue any particular project?
Yeah I’ve been working on ktool.io. It’s generating revenue now. Not much but that’s a good start
congrats, and good luck on your new journey, I am very happy to hear that you managed to leave your day job, and I have a question if you or anybody want to use a data visualization tool which can help you to make reports and share them to anyone like blog posts, also you can do some machine learning like supervised and unsupervised learning.
Congrats!
Noice! What is your dev stack?
oh boy, you got an hour and a whiteboard? It used to be simple enough to explain in a sentence but 2 years later it's grown into something else haha
Great app! I especially like the UI. Also your MRR is very impressive. How big is your team? I’m asking since I built my app (for Value Investing research) as a team of one. Still slowly increasing MRR.
Thank you! Our team is currently just two folks, me and @MoHowell95 running the show. We built up a decently diverse skillset so we capitalize on that although marketing is still a weakness that we're fixing up.
Doesn't TradingView have free stock alarms??
Fair question, we get people asking this quite often actually. Just because an alternative exists, doesn't mean it's up to par with the needs of our target audience.
We're fanatical about quality, user experience, and listening to our customers. This means constantly building and cutting out features, tweaking the UI, and considering new major additions to the platform.
An easier way for me to think about it is:
All of these are free products, however you've got a particular audience out there willing to pay for a much higher quality / more customized service. IMO It's the difference between doing everything decently and doing the right things incredibly well.
Ah I see, makes sense. Thanks for answering!
Brain Tracy suggest that keep writing each objection you get. And count them.
You need to answer these objections BEFORE customer ask you. In that case, he is asking you because you don't have "TradingView vs " page.
PS: You can also use "TradingView Alternative" as meta key for SEO.
Also a completely fair point, i have seen alot of these "X vs <my product>" type of blog posts popping up recently and it seems like an easy SEO win too.
Will definitely add that in as well. Thanks!
Absoulutely. You should have lots of things to do. And lots of ideas. Don't try to remember eveything. Have solid and quick note system. Google Keep, Notion, Asana all have a quick add sections.
Have an Inbox system. Try to add anything to it. Then you can prioritize, delegate, schedule, implement it.
Remember that the brain is for being creative. Don't make it carry something mundane.
My tweet about it https://twitter.com/turker_tunali/status/1569325064071581698?s=20&t=CS4tpd2YhFIfW6YROn6fog .
Do you have a plan B?
I could always try to go back to Amazon or get any other job. Part of de-risking myself to do this was to get a few years of experience to leverage to get a new gig in the worst case scenario.
It'll be a thrilling (but rewarding) experience! Where can we follow along with the development of StockAlarm?
Here's to hoping it makes for a great story!
I'm planning to post pretty regularly on IH, Twitter & LinkedIn if you'd like to follow along.
Twitter: @mynameisyahia
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yahia-bakour/
IH: https://www.indiehackers.com/yahiabakour
All the best. Enjoy the roller coaster journey. Between Stock Alarm looks good (Plus it's making money :) ). Best of luck.
Thank you so much! Excited to see how it goes :D
all the best on your journey! you get this :)
Thank you! Should be a fun time for sure
Congratulations
Yooo you're fearless friend! Hope it will work smoothly for ya!
Well done! And all the best!
I did this in my early thirties and wish I could do it earlier in my life.
Wow, that's great. Am sure it was hard at first.
Thank you!
Would you mind sharing what you took the leap on in your early thirties? Any advice for your younger self?
Permanent job, safety and solid career. My role was very focused on low code and business consultancy that is valuable but wanted to build more and get closer to product creation. Super scary but today I am so happy I made the move because I’m using both skillset that sets me apart.
Advice, good question :) Surround yourself with people that want to see you succeed. Cut the rest. And enjoy the journey, not a lot of people get that opportunity
All the best man!
good luck with you
Thank you! :D
Admire your courage and good luck with your new beginnings.
Appreciate it! Thank you
Hi there, just wanted to wish you good luck with your journey and have a great one! :)
Really appreciate it, thanks!
Congrats, and good luck! I looked at StockAlarm, and I was disappointed that I had to dig into the FAQ to find your pricing. Personally, I don't like products/software/saas with hidden pricing. Adding a page for it would be awesome.
That.... is a great callout actually.
Thanks for pointing that out. Will have it sorted it out soon :)
Congrats @yahiabakour, I takes great strength to make such a decision.
Appreciated! Thanks :)
As you already generate $20k+ MRR, you already have a good revenue generator. Whilst the risks are there, you have de-risk it with MRR. Well done @yahiabakour.
All the best
Manoj
https://skilledup.life - free talent for tech startups (once subscribed)
Yup agreed! The fact it's already at 20K MRR and has been live for a few years now totally helps de-risk the situation
Let me know if you like to mix paid talent with free talent from https://skilledup.life. We have 12,420 and they can do almost anything. All talent is free once subscribed.
[email protected]
Congrats! This is very exciting. I did the same thing 5 years ago. My only advice is try to keep a regular schedule, do not work around the clock - burnout is a real thing. Meet with friends, colleagues IRL. Don’t abandon any hobbies you may have.
Good luck Yahia! You will do great.
Woah that's awesome! Can you let me know what you went full-time on? Ho\w did it end up?
Appreciate the advice, yup i'm making sure to enjoy the work and to keep relatively reasonable hours. Working on something you love sure does make time fly by though haha!
Yo if you ever need to relax I'm here for ya at https://hardcocky.com/
No burnout guarantee <3
Great to hear you're going full-time, Yahia! You and Morgan are rocking this 🤟❤️
Thanks a ton man! Hope you're doing well.
If this works out we'll be sure to come celebrate w ya'll in Berlin :D
Beers on you, then 🍻
This is impressive and very critical steps to truly build a company. Good luck and I am sure you will be successful. Enjoy the journey!
Appreciated! Thank you :)
I wish you all the best, let's get it 💪
I can't imagine there's a better way to improve your skillset than going full-time on a project and there's plenty of time to earn Big Tech money down the road if it doesn't work out.
My train of thought exactly! I definitely want to learn as much as possible and avoid the golden handcuffs... for now :)
Congratz!
Congratulations Yahia! There will never be a good time to do it, sometimes, you just have to jump. I wish you the best of luck, and I'm rooting for you!
Thank you so much Phillip :D
I think rule number one of bootstrapping is don't quit your job until you make %60 of your income through your bootstrapped idea or something...
Perhaps that's a little exaggerated given current tech trends, but if you can cover rent and food, that's definitely when I would quit.
That being said without knowing your financial situation, I wish you the best of luck!
I do think that's a little bit of a stretch given big tech salaries and how successful your product needs to be to match that but perhaps you're onto something.
ATM the salaries we get from this cover monthly expenses in a high COL city (Seattle) with a relatively modest lifestyle. I did a ton of planning and thinking about how much runway i have in all scenarios (business doing great, stays the same, tanking) so hoping that further de-risks this decision.
Overall, it's gonna be a fun ride!
Very inspiring story here. Good for you to step out of the usual cycle and start full-time on your own project as a 23 year old.
Goodluck on your journey!
Thank you so much! Appreciate it a ton :)
Congrats on the first step! Being from a peer age group, I can totally relate to that feeling, Yahia
Just realized you built Famewall haha, i ran into it a while ago and thought it was cool actually.
Thanks a ton for the words of encouragement!
Thanks Yahia :)
Remember reading your interview years ago, good luck
Thanks for reminding me about that, loved when that came out! Think it was when we were still at 5K MRR give or take
congratulations i will be quitting my job next month to promote my product full time
Woah! It's definitely a way to spice up life i can tell you that for sure.
What's your product if you don't mind sharing?
Yeah you can always get back to work for amazon or something better.
Congrats on the leap and wish you all the best!
My thoughts exactly! Thank you :D
Good luck to you. Now is the time to do it!
Congrats, it's not bad, just stay careful and keep growing.
One day I'll post the same words here ^_^ it's just about taking the risk and go on. we won't die starving if we quit our job, just a question of passion and explore what is outside our comfort zone.
Congrats for taking the leap :D
If you miss having colleagues join us at the WBE Space community
I've heard tons about ya'll actually! Was considering it the other day, may try it out after all.
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