8 Things to Consider Before You Quit Your Job to Start a Business

Everyone knows someone who quit their job to "follow their passion" and ended up back in the job market six months later, burned out and broke. The startup graveyard is full of people who leaped before they looked.

But here's the thing: starting a business doesn't have to be a blind leap. The people who succeed tend to be the ones who did their homework first. Not endless planning, but smart de-risking.

If you're thinking about making the jump, here are eight things worth considering before you hand in your resignation.

1. Do You Actually Need to Quit?

This might sound counterintuitive in an article about quitting your job, but hear me out.

Most early-stage businesses don't actually need 8-10 hours of your time every day. In the beginning, you're figuring things out. Testing ideas. Talking to potential customers. Building a prototype. This can often happen in evenings and weekends.

The romantic narrative is "burn the boats and go all in." The practical reality is that keeping your income while you validate your idea dramatically reduces your risk. You can think more clearly when you're not worried about rent.

Ask yourself: Can I test this idea while still employed? Can I get my first paying customer before I quit? Can I build a basic version of this product in my spare time?

If yes, do that first. Quit when you have evidence it's working, not just a gut feeling that it might.

2. Is There Actually a Market?

One of the most common mistakes is building something nobody wants. You have an idea you're excited about, you assume others will be too, and you spend months building before discovering the market doesn't exist.

Here's a reframe that might help: competition is validation, not a threat.

When you research your idea and find ten other companies doing something similar, your first instinct might be "the market is saturated." But think about it differently. Those companies exist because there's demand. They've already proven people will pay for this.

Your job isn't to find an empty market. It's to find a gap in an existing one. Maybe the current options are too slow, too expensive, too complicated, or poorly designed. Maybe they're ignoring a specific demographic. Maybe their customer service is terrible.

Look for companies in your space that are doing well. That's your proof of concept. Then figure out what they're missing.

3. How Capital-Intensive Is This Really?

People tend to fall into two camps. Some assume they need to raise millions before they can start. Others assume they can bootstrap with zero investment. Both are usually wrong.

Here's the better approach: let the MVP define the number, not your assumptions.

What's the smallest, simplest version of your product or service that would be useful to a real customer? Not the version with all the features you dream about. The version that solves the core problem and nothing else.

Once you've defined that, you can actually estimate what it would cost to build. Maybe it's 10,000 kr. Maybe it's 100,000 kr. The number should come from research, not from a figure you pulled out of thin air.

For services, the capital requirement is often close to zero. If you're a consultant, designer, or freelancer, you might just need a laptop and some time. For products, you might need materials, a prototype, or contractor help. But it's rarely as much as people think.

The goal is to find the minimum: what's the least amount of money I need to get something real in front of customers?

4. What's Your Personal Runway?

This is different from business capital. This is about you.

If you quit your job tomorrow, how many months could you survive without any income? Be honest. Add up your actual monthly expenses. Rent, food, insurance, subscriptions, everything. Add 10% for unexpected costs. Multiply by 3, then by 6.

That's your 3-month and 6-month survival number.

If you don't have that saved up, you're adding enormous pressure to an already uncertain situation. You'll make worse decisions because you're desperate. You'll take bad clients or cut corners because you need cash now.

The best entrepreneurs I know had a runway before they jumped. Not necessarily years, but enough to think clearly. Enough to say no to the wrong opportunities. Enough to survive a few months of building before revenue kicks in.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: even if you plan to raise money, you might not be able to. You have no customers, no traction, no proof. Investors see hundreds of pitches like yours. Having personal runway means you're not betting everything on someone else saying yes.

5. Do You Have Anyone Who Would Actually Pay?

Not "do you think people would pay for this." Do you have specific humans who have told you they would pay for this?

There's a huge gap between "that's a cool idea" and "here's my credit card." Your friends and family will tell you your idea is great because they love you and want to support you. That's nice, but it's not validation.

Real validation looks like this:

Talk to people who would actually be your customers. Not your mom. Not your college roommate (unless they're genuinely in your target market). Find people who have the problem you're trying to solve.

Ask them how they currently deal with it. Ask them what they'd pay for a better solution. And here's the real test: offer them an early-bird discount. "If you sign up now, you'll get 50% off when it launches." See if they actually commit.

If they won't pay even at a steep discount, that tells you something important. If they will, you've just got your first validation and maybe your first customer.

Be careful who you ask, though. You need people who will tell you no. You need honest feedback, not encouragement. The people who say "I wouldn't use this because..." are more valuable than the ones who say "yeah, sounds cool."

6. What Skills Do You Have vs. What Do You Need?

Take a realistic inventory.

If you want to build an app but you can't code, that's a significant gap. You either need to learn (which takes time) or hire someone (which takes money). If you want to start a marketing agency but you've never run a campaign, same problem.

Map out what the business actually requires:

• What skills are essential to deliver the product or service?
• Which of those do you already have?
• Which do you need to acquire or outsource?

Sometimes realizing you don't have the skills is a good thing. It might mean partnering with someone who complements you. It might mean starting with something simpler that you can actually execute on. It might mean spending six months learning before you quit your job.

The worst outcome is quitting, realizing you can't actually build the thing, and scrambling to figure it out while your runway burns.

7. How Can You Be Different?

You've validated that a market exists. You've found competitors. Now: why would anyone choose you over them?

Here's the good news. As someone just starting out, you have advantages that established companies don't:

Speed. You have no legacy code, no technical debt, no "but we've always done it this way." You can build features in hours that would take a large company months of meetings and approvals.

Focus. You can obsess over a narrow problem. Big companies spread their attention across dozens of products and thousands of customers. You can go deep where they go wide.

Flexibility. No existing customers means no one complaining when you change things. You can pivot overnight if you learn something new.

Personal touch. You can reply to every email personally. You can get on calls with customers. You can provide a level of attention that scales poorly for big players.

Modern tools amplify this. With Cursor, Lovable, and similar tools, a solo founder can build things that would have required a team five years ago. The playing field has never been more level.

Figure out your edge. Maybe it's speed of delivery. Maybe it's price. Maybe it's targeting an underserved niche. Maybe it's just caring more than the incumbents do. But know what it is before you start.

8. Set a Deadline

This one is uncomfortable but important.

Most people who start businesses don't set a point at which they'd reassess. They drift. "One more month." "Let me just try this one thing." "It's about to turn around." And before they know it, two years have passed with nothing to show for it. It's the sunk cost fallacy in action: you keep going because you've already invested so much, not because the evidence says you should.

Set a deadline upfront. Not "I'll work on this forever until it works." Something concrete: "If I don't have paying customers by month 6, I'll step back and evaluate whether to continue."

This does a few things.

It creates urgency. Time is money, especially when you're burning runway. The faster you can validate or invalidate your idea, the faster you can either double down or move on to something better.

It prevents scope creep. When you have a deadline, you start asking "what can I cut to get to MVP faster?" instead of "what features should I add?" You focus on the essentials.

It forces honest evaluation. Without a deadline, it's easy to keep telling yourself a story. With one, you have to actually look at the numbers and decide if this is working.

And here's the upside: getting customers early compounds. Your first customer makes the second easier. Your tenth makes the twentieth easier. The sooner you validate, the sooner that flywheel starts spinning. (If you want to dig deeper into this, read about the compound effect.)

The Bottom Line

Quitting your job to start a business can be one of the best decisions you ever make. It can also be one of the worst. The difference usually isn't luck or talent. It's preparation.

The entrepreneurs who make it tend to be the ones who:

• Tested before they leaped
• Understood their market
• Knew their numbers
• Had runway to think clearly
• Found real customers, not just supporters
• Were honest about their gaps
• Knew their edge
• Set boundaries on their commitment

Do the homework. Reduce the risk. Then, when you do quit, quit with confidence.