B2B tool, $2.1k MRR, 34 customers, gross margin is fine because it is mostly Postgres and a small box. I have about 9 months of personal runway saved. Single income, no dependents, mid-30s. My instinct says quit and give it real hours. My spreadsheet says wait for $4k. Anyone who has stood exactly here — what did you actually use to decide?
The middle option most people skip: ask to go to four days. I took a 20% pay cut for a full extra working day on the product and kept the health insurance. My manager said yes in one conversation because replacing me would have cost more than a day a week.
One real working day beats four exhausted evenings by a distance that surprised me. Worst case they say no and you are exactly where you are now.
Did three days for eight months. The unexpected part was which hours I got — a Tuesday morning is a completely different cognitive resource from 21:00 on a Wednesday. The product got the good brain for the first time.
Work out your actual monthly floor, not your current spend. Rent, food, insurance, minimum debt service. Most people find the real number is 25-30% below what they live on now, which changes the runway maths far more than another $1.9k of MRR would.
Single income means the downside is not "I go back to a job". It is "I go back to a job in whatever market exists in nine months". Weight it by how long your last search took and add a month, because you will be interviewing after a gap with a failed-ish project on your CV.
We quit at $3.8k and the first thing we did with all that new time was build features, because building is comfortable and selling is not. Full-time did not fix that instinct, it just funded it for a while.
@bedroomsynth · 6mo ago · 3 replies
MRR is the wrong number to decide on. Three others matter more.
Trend and churn. $2.1k growing 12% a month with 3% logo churn is an entirely different business from $2.1k that has been flat for five months. The first one quits, the second one does not.
What 9 months of runway actually is. It is closer to 5, because the last four you will spend job hunting with a distracted brain and a gap on your CV, and you cannot do that and build at the same time.
What the bottleneck is. Is it hours or demand? If the last three months of nights produced no growth, more hours will not produce growth either — you have a demand problem, and going full time converts it into a demand problem with a countdown.
Reply
Report
@ines_marchetti · 6mo ago
Flat for four months. I have been telling myself it was flat because I have no time, and I do not have evidence for that. Uncomfortable and useful, thank you.
Reply
Report
@bedroomsynth · 6mo ago
Flat is not fatal. But fix it while you still have income, because after you quit every experiment is being run by someone watching a bank balance, and that person makes worse decisions.
Reply
Report