[asebold]

Author here - Glad you found that line helpful. Of course, the goal would be building your business on the side until it's making a substantial amount of money, and then quitting your job. But I know that isn't a feasible path for everyone. Personally, I tried starting my initial project as a side project, but made very little progress over two years, which was the catalyst for going "all in". I'd still suggest trying to build the business on the side first, just to see if you can manage it. Best of luck!

[jollofricepeas]

Agreed.

It really comes down to side business model, the culture of where you’re at full-time and how much you’re willing to sacrifice personally.

I never quit my day job after growing my business to ~$5m annually mainly because it’s e-commerce which is easy to automate and I’ve hired a great team.

It’s sad to say but unless you’ve cleared $15m; making a few million really isn’t a lot of money truly so I recommend that people either:

1) make their day job their first customer or an investor

2) explore lifestyle type businesses that work well with their day job meaning no travel, easy delegation, etc (ie. FBA, shopify, physical products, micro-SaaS)

[xupybd]

Can you share more about your side business? For some reason it's really exciting to hear some is doing something other than SAAS.

[FlyingSnake]

Not OP but they seem to be in the DNVB/DTC business. It is an interesting eCommerce sector.

1: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-...

[xupybd]

Thanks, I've never heard that term before but I'm pretty sure I work for a DVVB.

[jollofricepeas]

The DTC (later DNVB) sector was a big part of the e-commerce boom in the 2010s through the pandemic.

It was fueled by cheap Facebook advertising, iOS tracking and cheap FBA fees then later on by cheap Amazon advertising and to a lesser degree, TikTok.

Lots of successful small and family businesses were created during this time period with revenues of 500k-$20m of which I own one.

But the largest ones were companies like Anker, Away, Casper, Warby Parker.

And the underlying shovel companies like Shopify, Stamps/ShipStation, Mailchimp, Zebra and many others.

Pretty much, the play was the same.

1. Identify a decent size niche market that you can hyper target on Facebook or Instagram. Pet, health/wellness, beauty, exercise were especially popular.

2. Source/design a product from Asia that has a high enough margin for advertising

3. Buy ads on social media, hire influencers, and build a strong email channel via Mailchimp

4. Drive customers initially to Shopify and then later to Amazon FBA

5. If you have a strong enough brand, then take your products to brick and mortar retailers

That all went well for years especially with customers flush with pandemic monies until the iOS upgrade and Amazon started squeezing sellers.

At the tail end of the pandemic, VC money poured multiple billions into the market as they used the PE aggregator model to create entities like Thrasio, Elevate, Accel to buy up a lot of small players in the $5-20m ARR space.

Now times are dire for all.