Quit my job, began working full time on MockRocket

After almost two years working as a software engineer on the growth team at HubSpot, I decided it was time to jump into Indie Hacking full time for a while.

It was a difficult decision to leave, compounded by the uncertainty of the ongoing pandemic. I liked the company and my team a lot, and there were plenty of opportunities to keep advancing in the engineering and management track. I was a front end engineer, but I had a persistent itch try my hand at all the creative aspects of launching early stage/indie products–design, marketing, and backend–an experience that's difficult to get at a large established company.

While working full time I launched a handful of small side projects on nights and weekends, including one paid product, AppointmentScanner.com, which helps people find Global Entry appointments. This project helped me prove to myself I could identify a problem, build a complete software solution and convince people (not friends or family) to pay for it. I managed to get 6 customers.....and then COVID shut down the travel industry ¯\(ツ)/¯ and my business disappeared. But it didn't matter. As soon as that first Stripe notification hit my phone, I was hooked. That $10 payment felt much more significant than any paycheck I had received to date. And when that first customer emailed me a feature request and told me he had recommended my product to all his coworkers–game over. I was an Indie Hacker now.

Although I've had entrepreneurial dreams for over a decade, I definitely never pictured myself leaving a full time job before my new business was bringing in reliable income. If you read accounts from successful Indie Hackers, you'll find plenty of advice on both sides of the "when to leave your job" debate:

• "Don't quit until you replace your income. SaaS has a slow ramp up."
• "Build up some savings and just go for it. Worst case you get another job and not having income can be motivating"

For me personally, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me to just jump in.

My thought process went something like this:

• I'm young (24) and have very few responsibilities at the moment so I can tolerate some risk. No house, family, kids or even pets to worry about. I'm even fortunate enough to be able to cling to my parent's health insurance plan for two more years (until 26 in the US).
• Even if I didn't leave my job to build this business, I would probably still end up leaving in the near future to move to an earlier stage startup, just for the experience of it. And if I'm going to change jobs anyways anyways, why not take some time off in between and try my hand at this? I have enough savings to last for a while without income
• Regardless of whether this business works out or not I'll learn a lot and probably end up a better engineer and entrepreneur
• Working full time on this project, I'll learn much quicker if it has potential than if I were trying to build this on nights and weekends over months and months

So I did it! May 15th was my last day at my job. It was bittersweet to leave, but my coworkers were incredibly supportive. I left on good terms and I'll be keeping in touch in case things change in the future and I want to jump back into a full time job.

As of writing this I've been building MockRocket for about 5 weeks, and nearing a big MVP milestone. More updates coming soon!