Taking a leap of faith.
Hi, I am 23M, working as a software engineer in Bangalore at a Fintech company. My current CTC is 45LPA with in hand salary is around 1.8 L.
Since I came to Bangalore after finishing college, my life has been going up and up only. Everything is getting perfectly aligning month by month. Got a very nice salary increment after 1 year of working. The tech and projects I am working on are challenging. Although my WLB is not that great. Best of all, I got into a relationship with a girl with whom I was friend for like 9 months.
As a self satisfied person I think my life is going very well. But what next?
Therefore I took 1 week leave to think about what next and after a lot of thinking I have decided to start a business/startup. Will share about my startup in some other post. But I am taking a leap of faith in myself and planning to leave my job at the end of December. I will slowly start to make the base for my startup until then.
Thanks for reading this far.
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
My 2 cents
1)Quit your job when your startup starts making half the money you're currently earning.
2) Always have 6 month cash reserve.
From someone running a business, my 2 cents. I would suggest not to quit yet.
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1.8L is a pretty good salary by any standard for a 23 year old.
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Grass is greener on the other side. You might be feeling life will be so much more exciting once you start a business/ start-up. A lot of folks running a business/ start-up think getting a good pay and working 9-5 ain't bad either - but most of them won't admit it.
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You are still very young, there's a lot more you can learn/ earn before you quit. Startup/business is not just about your technical skills, but a lot of people management (employee & clients). It's very hard to scale if you're going to start a business in the service segment.
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Everything is an expense. You will be astonished by what all bleeds your money. Try calculating the revenue you must hit in order to draw a similar/ higher salary. And the amount of work/hours you've to put to hit that number will be lightyears apart from what you do rn.
My suggestion would be to
- Work a few more years. (35-40 isn't a bad time to start a business- lot of contacts & credibility by then)
- Save up as much as you can. A strong base.
- Learn how your current company runs. What does each department do? At least a vague idea of various sop of each department.
I can keep going, but these are some of my suggestions from experience.
Don't leave your job before you're 100% sure about your business idea. You are going good, must better than most of the people around your age and even older for that matter (including me). So take more time, understand things more and then the plunge. And before doing all that, if you would tell us which company you work for and refer kar de bhai, pls.
Test your idea before quiting don't fall in love with it ( netflix ex ceo )
Why can't you start while employed? If it's anything in tech, I'd get my MVP ready before quitting.
Yes, you are right. I have started it one month back and will continue to work on the MVP till December. After December only I will quit my job.
There's more than meets the eye when starting up. While, I don't mean discourage you I would like to caution you.
Here's what I propose, Start slowing easing into the business side of things + logistical aspects not to mention managerial aspects as well. Build up domain expertise in whatever it is you're trying to do and then venture into it when you have decent runaway captial.
Remember, less than 1% startups manage to get off of the ground.
I usually tend to have tunnel vision and only focus and fantasize about the good stuff and have come to understand that such decisions must be followed by exhaustively thinking it through!
Good luck
This comment is from a non-business owner who watches lots of business podcasts. Obviously, I cannot judge our skill set from your package alone but your package does give me some ideas. I could write few pages on cautionary comments but I would stress the below points.
A business is not a one man journey and thus while you are smart your employees may not be as talented as you or as motivated as you.
A lot of people have left their high paying jobs to start a business and ended in disaster. So I would watch these podcasts (from reputed people and not those wannabe types) to get a solid idea. You don't need a business to grow your wealth and having a business means that you increase your risk apatite as well.
Could you please suggest some good podcasts related to business and startups? Thanks!
Best of luck dude go ahead. But be aware that Starting a business is not easy. Until it become successful you have to go through hell.
All the best💙
Man good for you! The only thing I would suggest is like you took the leave to think on what next, take a good amount of time before you leave your job , do all the pros and cons