Member-only story
Quitting my $300,000 Google job for a 0 User app
It wasn’t worth it.
Introduction
In 2023, I joined Google as a software engineer and made a total compensation close to $300,000.
It was an amazing experience filled with free food and learning opportunities. But over the year the excitement died down and everyday started to feel the same.
The same people, same code reviews, same problems.
I needed a change and wanted to be more adventurous, so I started building an app with what I understood writing on LinkedIn.
It has 0 users and everyday I regret leaving my job for a project that hasn’t been proven.
But first lets start with how this journey started.
200,000 LinkedIn following
I write a lot on linkedin, a lot of random posts, some posts on advice, and some posts to try to go viral. After doing this as a covid hobby since 2020, I figured I’d have an unfair advantage in this space as a super user.
After talking to friends and other creators, we all had a common problem.
LinkedIn creators are not paid for their content.
So I started building an app (to try) to solve that. Long story short, I haven’t been able to solve this.
Getting funding
You really feel like a company once you get funding. I thought I’d try my luck with a few accelerators like YCombinator.
I applied with the idea to build a short post newsletter to monetize creators. I filled out the details, submitted the app and waited 3 weeks to get a response.
“This is a tarpit idea. Give us a B2B sass problem you’ve seen at work.”
The strange thing is I couldn’t tell if this response meant “are you really convicted?” or “this is a really bad idea”. I went along and just submitted a totally different B2B idea.
Got the interview the next week.
