You have a 9-5 job. And you've been working on your startup for a few months.

IMHO if you freelance you also spend a lot time working for somebody. Same as a 9-5 job.

What i would do:

• keep your job
• validate your idea by building an MVP, use your free time for this. Most of the time it turns out that your idea is not good, no product-market fit ,etc.
• Get some revenue and based on the revenue growth project the point where it can pay your bills.
• When you reached that point, quit your job a go full time with your project.

Personally, my goal would be to quit the 9-5 as soon as possible no matter what I'm working on! But I first did that when I started freelancing, and I'm currently doing that now :)

As most have said, option 1 is the best one, I'll add my own take :)

Building any product is risky, if you work at an established company a the risk of a new product is losing money, if you are building a startup the risk of your new product is no income.

If you can develop your product nights and weekends then do that, it means less going out but that's why we do it. All the while, test and iterate. Collect as much feedback as possible, talk to as many people as you can squeeze in and once you think you've had enough talk to more. There are 2 main stages to work through in going from idea to MVP to product.

1. Something as simple as a landing page with form and $50 of Google ads can help you validate your idea to see whether it's worth it. It's not too time consuming so this is a pretty easy first step.

A) Once you have an MVP, get those people (and more, run more ads, post here, on reddit etc) to test the product out and note their feedback. This is also doesn't have to be too time consuming, set up a system for reaching out and collecting feedback (maybe a google form or airtable form).

B) Try to connect with the people testing it on a call and record it if you can, this does get a bit time consuming but it's not too bad to juggle with a job.

It's important to not just ask for features to tack on so much as understand their goals, problems, and how your product solves for them in a way no other product does. No one wants features they want problems solved.

Rinse and repeat A and B as you iterate until you get to a point where people are regularly using your product, the kinks are worked out, and you have people paying/willing to pay. You'll get a gut feeling when managing the support volume/sales strategy/product development is just too much to do with 9-5 AND is worth quitting your job for.

1. Keep on pushing to deliver quality stuff for both

But

I would re-evaluate my need (or rather, desire) to code an entire program and see if it's worth going down the no-code solution. This is what I've been doing this past month and honestly, it seems like a better approach for me.

Have you done any validation of the need your mvp is planning to solve? If you want to quit your job, do that first to make sure there are people who actually want the thing you're building. Otherwise I say keep grinding away at both.

Stay employed, build your project during your free time. See it grow until it can replace your employment income, then leave and focus on the project full-time.

I would opt for 1., with these immediate steps:

• Go for revenue validation ASAP. Put a Stripe widget in, charge users after a few weeks trial. No free stuff. Do all other kinds of validation too, problem validation, audience verification, but don't believe you're onto something until you have dollars in your bank
• Once you have some revenue and see some growth, evaluate how long you want to stay in your 9-5. Make a few projections. Use tools like Baremetrics and Summit (particularly awesome) for projections.
• Only quit when you have more than enough to cover your taxes, business expenses, personal expenses and still have a safety net for a few months.

Then look into bootstrapper funding sources like Earnest Capital or indie.vc to make sure you stay your own boss.

1. Keep delivering quality stuff for both sides.
   This way you keep your job if your idea does not stick or you can prove your idea an generate enough revenue to quit your day job.