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Revolve Nation Meetup December 7, 2011 Recap: Quitting a Job to Start a Venture

The Revolve Nation Boston Entrepreneurs Meetup is the largest community of entrepreneurs and small business owners in the city of Boston, offering networking, discussion groups, seminars, business plan hot-seats, and more. We meet every two weeks on Wednesday nights to network, socialize, learn, and promote a thriving community of entrepreneurs.

Our meeting last Wednesday was our first since Thanksgiving, with about thirty entrepreneurs attending. Without further ado, here’s a summary of  my favorite point from the group discussion portion:

How can I decide when to quit my job to start a venture?

The group fielded a question from one of the participants about transitioning from a full-time day job to a venture—definitely one of the hardest decisions a person can make. Fortunately, several members of the group had done this themselves, and were able to offer some insights into the process.

One strategy that emerged was to try to get a proof of concept in the form of positive cash flow. That is, run your venture in your spare time and see if you can get it to make money. If you can, see if you can get it to make enough money that, if you were working on it full-time, it could actually pay for you to live.

At that point, it may be time to take the dive! If a 30-hours per week effort is making money, and that therefore a 60-hours a week effort would pay your most basic expenses (and those of the business), then if your projections hold true, you have a persuasive reason to believe you can earn even more money in your venture once it really takes off.

If you want to hear more or throw in your two cents, join us at Meetup!

You can contact the author here, and follow @revolvethis and @gerritbetz on Twitter.