What net worth would make you feel safe to go indie full time?

The fact that you are here, I am sure you understand that building business is "really hard". And to do hard things and stay in the game long enough you need to build that endurance into your system, The conventional wisdom would say "de-risk yourself as much as possible" and those who are giving you advice without taking any responsibility of your failure/successes would usually say " be cautious and balance it out" .

I think it comes down to: What is your confidence level on the overall opportunity, your readiness to exploit it (skillset, mindset, people rooting for you, initial money - although money only solves small set of problems) and solid math on your personal money cashflow that keeps you afloat over few years if it goes side ways.

I look at it as, how much validation do I need that investing my time and energy in this opportunity is returning me the benefits (money + entrepreneurial learning and what I will do with it in number of years left in my life)

What are you trying to build? What stage in career are you in?

I'd rephrase this as: "how much runway time do you think you'll need to get your indie project off the ground?"

My answer would be it really depends on the costs of your business but a few financial planning rules I've heard over the years are:

• have immediate access to at least 6mo savings (outside of the burn calculations)
• make sure it's enough that you're ACTUALLY psychologically comfortable to go full time (I've made this mistake in the past and the stress of knowing where your next reliable money/rent will come from and its a killer for starting a business)
• be EXTREMELY conservative with your estimates of burn. My rec is to 2-3x them depending on your prior track record of saving/spending money/time. It will almost always take longer than you think to hit PMF

Focus on MRR not net worth. Bootstrap yourself to Ramen profitability and you can quit your full time job whenever you want.

I think more important than financial runaway is how much your project is de-risked. If you quit your job and haven’t built anything and haven’t spoken to any customers, that’s a lot of risk. If you’ve already built a side project, and have some paying customers that is significantly de-risked. If you see competitors in your space with a viable financial model, and you have a good idea i how to make your product even better, and you’ve spoken with potential customers and they agree, that’s de-risked. If there are no companies succeeding in your space, that’s a red flag that the business isn’t viable.

But to answer your question, I would say 18 months minimum runway.

Usually you'd want to look at this in terms of runway. How long you'd be able to support your current lifestyle (or a reduced lifestyle you're willing to take) given your current available cash.

For me, I'd give it around 1 year. Shorter than many people but with the skills I have I know worst case scenario I'd be able to get a job with relative ease.

Personally, much more towards the latter. If I spent a year or two unsuccessfully building a product, I think I'd be pretty devastated if I was also broke afterwards. But I think I'm a bit too risk averse for my own good.

I don't need much today, but I am worried about retirement and having enough money then.

24-36 months of runway.