Completely agree about no downside in terms of experience. Worst case scenario it will be valuable ‘business’ experience that I can use if I wanted, or needed, to get back into the corporate job market.

Will see what happens! Love ESC btw, it’s inspirational reading.

The damn money question!

What we did was we saved as much as we could from our corporate jobs for a period of 12 months to a) start the business (£5k each) and b) to give ourselves as many months without earning a salary. We thought we had about a year of living like a student under our belts.

We also actually did a lot of the pre-launch work in and around our jobs. So that we were ready to hit the ground running when we quit.

Beyond that… once the money began running out (it always lasts less time than you think) we did a variety of things to make ends meet: private tutoring to school kids, sub-letting our rooms to new flatmates (sleeping on the sofa!) and part-time work.

Then there are the non-advisable tactics of going into debt / borrowing money / credit cards. However, we were fortunate in that we were only full-time on Escape the City for 6 months before we started making money from our job board.

We also rationalised quitting our jobs by the fact that we were going to leave in any case and that if it didn’t work out we’d see the experience of trying to start a business as a learning experience or a masters that we didn’t pay for!

Many professionals end up funding their start-up through contract work. Particularly if they have a broad base of skills (i.e. consulting). There are agencies where you can register for short-term contracts and the day rates are often huge. So you work for a month to give yourself two months of start-up time. Not ideal but it works.

Hope that’s useful!

Rob

Question. The one big thing stopping me quitting tomorrow is how I would survive for the first couple of years if the model is unlikely to generate revenue in that time, much like your idea.

How did you grapple with this problem?