Solve customer acquisition before going full-time—prove your distribution channel works while employed
Don't quit your job until you've solved the customer acquisition problem and have a distribution strategy you can 'throw gasoline on.' You need proof that more time will equal proportional output—that you can scale your working acquisition channel rather than hoping something will work. The goal is de-risking the full-time leap by validating you have a repeatable, scalable way to get customers.
When to use
When considering going full-time on a side project. Use your employed time to validate distribution channels, not just build product features.
Don't do this
Quitting your job as soon as you have a working product or initial revenue, then discovering you have no scalable way to acquire customers and burning through savings.
3 Founders Who Did This
Proved distribution channel (Facebook, physical events) and built to $8K MRR while employed at IBM
Validated that Product Hunt, building in public, and Twitter could consistently generate clients while still employed, proving distribution worked before going full-time
When laid off at $3K MRR, chose to go full-time because he had already proven content marketing worked as a distribution channel and knew more time would equal more output