After our first investor came in, I called my dad.
"Dad, once we raise $150K, I'm quitting Johnson & Johnson."
Here's where I was when I made that call. By day I was a product analyst at J&J. Six-figure salary, great benefits, safe.
By night, from 6pm to 11pm, I was building Filteroff, a video dating app. The app that would go on to raise $2.4M, run over 2 million video dates, hit #1 on Product Hunt, and get acquired.
My dad paused. "Are you sure?"
He was the Chair of Pediatrics at a major New York hospital at the time. Realistic, grounded, the guy who asks the practical question. My mom was the entrepreneurial one. I got value from both.
I was sure. I'd wanted this since I was 21. The paycheck was security. Filteroff was belief.
The number made it feel clean. Hit $150K, walk in, give notice. Simple.
It didn't happen like that.
The first investor came out of a Clubhouse room for Asian entrepreneurs, on a weekend. Then the money kept coming. $150K came and went, and I was still doing requirements meetings by day and building by night.
There was never a clean moment to jump, because the raise wouldn't stop snowballing. I was already mentally out the door, and the momentum kept building anyway.
The funny part is that the people around me at J&J saw it before I said a word. I told a colleague in New Brunswick HQ that I was going to take the leap before my manager knew. Another coworker told me later she'd always known I would leave. She was confused why I was still there at all.
That's not a knock on the job. The opposite. That salary funded every late night of building, and my colleagues were encouraging about the side projects, not suspicious of them.
In October 2021, with $1.4M raised, I finally quit. We raised another million right after. $2.4M total.
The late nights had a fuel source, and it wasn't discipline. I'd fall asleep thinking: I don't want to go back to a 9-to-5. That thought did more for me than any productivity system.
Three years later, Filteroff got acquired by a dating conglomerate. And in all that time, I never once considered going back. Not a single week. Not a single day.
Looking back, the number mattered more than I understood at the time. I picked $150K before any of it was real, back when quitting was theoretical and I could think straight.
By the time the decision arrived, it was already made. I didn't have to trust my gut in an emotional moment. I just had to follow the math I'd set down when I was calm.
That's the part worth copying, and it works for more than quitting. Decide in advance when you'll fire the vendor, what revenue number makes the hire, or when you'll kill the project that isn't working. Decisions made calm beat decisions made in the moment, and the only way to get them is to make them early.
One thing to try this week: pick a decision you keep circling and set the number now, while it's still theoretical. Write it down. Let the number do the deciding later.
If you're building something on the side and trying to figure out when the math works, hit reply and tell me where you're at. I read every reply.
Zach
P.S. When I finally went full time, press was what got us users, and it cost nothing but effort. PressPitch finds the right journalists and writes your pitches. Free 14-day trial. presspitchai.com
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