4 builders who never spoke to each other

Keep the income that pays your bills

Fund the attempt out of a job, a client or your own modest cash rather than betting savings against a deadline, since these businesses routinely take a year before revenue changes anything. One rule of thumb is to hold the salary until the side product has beaten it for six consecutive months.

The method

1. 01

   Hold on to the salaried job until the side product has beaten that salary for six months in a row.

2. 02

   Run it on the side of the day job until it stands up, rather than quitting first.

3. 03

   Before you launch, work out how you will run your life if the product has to coexist with your day job for a year, because revenue rarely moves the needle sooner than that.

4. 04

   Line up a second source of income while bootstrapping, since the timescale of a hard problem is long enough to break you financially or personally.

5. 05

   Fund the build modestly out of your own pocket while keeping the income that pays your bills, rather than raising or quitting first.

What it returned

• $5,000

  Justin and Jon each put $5,000 into Transistor and kept their main gigs until they were ready to go full-time; Transistor launched in August 2018 and has since made millions in revenue.

• Six consecutive months of side project revenue above the job.

• Sal Khan built Khan Academy alongside his job as an analyst, and Quincy Larson started FreeCodeCamp as a side project.

• The author says most of these businesses take at least a year before revenue is enough to either go full-time or hire help

Sources

• Necessary but not sufficientJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Necessary but not sufficient · undated
• Older founders do this betterJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Older founders do this better · undated
• @levelsio's blogPieter Levels · levels.io · Don't quit your job until side project revenue surpasses it for 6 months · 2018-03-20
• From knowledge-management to knowledge-creation with RemNoteMartin Schneider · nesslabs.com · From knowledge-management to knowledge-creation with the founders of RemNote · 2022-01-20
• Education Platforms: Gamification, Income Share Agreements, UpskillingSal Khan · trends.vc · ☁️ Opportunities · 2022-05-07
• Chapter 6: Thriving in the Long, Slow, SaaS Grind - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · 2017-03-14
• The Year Everything ChangedCory Zue · coryzue.com · The year I figured out there are many paths (July) · 2017-12-29