I Quit My $400K FAANG Job and Now Make $50K/Month From a One-Person SaaS

My former colleagues think I'm insane. Every few weeks, one of them sends me a LinkedIn message that's some variation of "dude, are you okay?" or "so when are you coming back to reality?" Last month, my old skip-level manager—a VP who controls a $200M annual budget—told me over coffee that I'd "thrown away a career most people would kill for."

He's not wrong. I did throw it away. And it was the best decision I've ever made.

But I need to be honest with you upfront: this article is not a blueprint. It's a single data point. My story involves a terrifying amount of luck, privilege, and timing. If you read this and think "I should quit my job tomorrow," you've missed the point entirely.

Here's what actually happened.

The Golden Handcuffs: 6 Years at [FAANG Company]

I joined a major FAANG company straight out of my master's program in 2017. Started at $165K total comp. By year six, I was a Senior Software Engineer (L5 equivalent) pulling in roughly $400K/year:

• Base salary: $195K
• RSU vesting: ~$170K/year (4-year vest, refreshers stacking)
• Annual bonus: ~$35K
• Total: ~$400K

I worked on internal developer tooling. The work was... fine. Not world-changing, not soul-crushing—just fine. I shipped features that maybe 2,000 internal engineers used. My code reviews were thorough. My design docs were praised. I got "Exceeds Expectations" three years in a row.

And I was slowly dying inside.

The burnout didn't hit me like a truck. It was more like carbon monoxide—odorless, invisible, and by the time you notice it, you're already in trouble. The symptoms:

• Sunday evening dread that started Friday afternoon
• Checking Slack compulsively at 11 PM "just in case"
• Spending more time in meetings about work than doing work
• A growing cynicism about whether any of it mattered
• Physical symptoms: insomnia, weight gain, jaw clenching, back pain

I told myself the same story every year: "One more vesting cliff. One more refresher grant. Then I'll figure out what I actually want." That's how golden handcuffs work. You never leave because the next payout is always just around the corner.

The Idea: My Wife's Accounting Firm

My wife, Daniela, is a CPA. She's been working at a mid-size accounting firm (about 85 employees) for eight years. I'd listened to her complain about their software for our entire relationship.

One evening in January 2024, she came home visibly frustrated. Her firm had just failed a compliance audit—not because they'd done anything wrong, but because they couldn't produce the documentation fast enough. The auditors needed specific records cross-referenced in a specific format, and the firm's process was: export from three different systems, paste into Excel, manually reconcile, have a partner review, then generate a PDF.

It took two partners and three staff accountants four full days.

I asked her: "What if there were software that just... did that automatically?"

She laughed. "There isn't. Trust me, we've looked. The big platforms like Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer have modules for it, but they cost $200K+/year, require 6-month implementations, and still don't do the cross-referencing part well. The mid-market firms like ours just suffer."

That night I couldn't sleep. I started googling. I called three of Daniela's accountant friends over the next week. I posted in r/Accounting and got 47 replies confirming the exact same pain point. The market was there. The pain was real. And nobody was serving it.

Key Takeaways1 / 3
Key Metrics Snapshot (Month 14)
Monthly Recurring Revenue: $51,200. Annual Run Rate: $614,400. Net Revenue Retention: 112%. Monthly Churn: 0.8%. Customer Acquisition Cost: $340. Lifetime Value (projected): $28,400. LTV:CAC Ratio: 83:1. Customers: 89 firms.
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The Decision to Quit

I didn't quit impulsively. I spent three months validating the idea while still employed:

1. Customer discovery: 23 interviews with accountants at firms sized 20-200 people
2. Competitive analysis: Mapped every compliance tool in the market
3. Technical feasibility: Built a proof-of-concept over two weekends
4. Financial planning: Calculated my runway (more on this below)

In April 2024, I put in my two weeks. My manager was stunned. My director tried to counter-offer with a promo path to Staff Engineer. HR offered a 6-month leave of absence "just in case."

I declined everything. I was terrified. But I was more terrified of being 45 and still waiting for the next vesting cliff.

Tech Stack: I Chose Boring on Purpose

This might be the most controversial part of this article for the HN crowd. Here's what I built with:

Total infrastructure cost: ~$2,100/month. That's it. No Kubernetes. No microservices. No Docker in production. Just a monolithic Rails app on Heroku with a Postgres database and a Redis instance.

The most important technology decision I made was choosing tech I already knew. Every hour I spend fighting infrastructure is an hour I'm not talking to customers or shipping features.

Launch Timeline: From Idea to $50K MRR

Marketing: No Paid Ads, No Growth Hacks

I spent exactly $0 on paid advertising. Here's what actually worked:

1. Cold Emails (Months 5-8)

I scraped CPA firm directories and sent personalized cold emails. Not spray-and-pray—I researched each firm, found their compliance pain points, and wrote custom outreach. Response rate: 12%. Conversion rate from response to demo: 35%. This got me from 4 to 12 customers.

2. LinkedIn Content (Months 8-12)

I started posting about accounting compliance on LinkedIn. Not "entrepreneur motivation" content—actual, useful compliance insights. One post about common audit documentation mistakes got 180K impressions and drove 340 demo requests in a week. I converted about 15 of those.

3. Accounting Conference Circuit (Months 6-14)

This is the secret weapon. Accountants are deeply community-oriented. They go to the same conferences, trust recommendations from peers, and are skeptical of flashy marketing. I attended 8 conferences, usually just buying a basic exhibitor table for $1,500-$3,000. Face-to-face demos at conferences converted at 40%.

4. Word of Mouth (Months 9+)

Once I had about 20 happy customers, the flywheel started. Accountants talk to each other. One firm would recommend me to their peers. A managing partner would mention us at a regional CPA society meeting. This is now my #1 growth channel and costs nothing.

Revenue Breakdown

Note: ~60% of customers are on annual plans, which I've converted to MRR equivalent in the table above.

The Dark Period: Months 3-7

Nobody talks about this part, so I will.

For five months, I made less than $2,500/month. I was burning through savings. Every morning I'd check my Stripe dashboard hoping for a new signup, and most mornings there was nothing.

Month 7 was the worst. October 2024. I had 6 customers, $2,400 MRR, and I was spending $6,800/month on infrastructure + a part-time contractor. I was literally losing money. Daniela was supportive but I could see the worry in her eyes when we talked about finances.

I applied to three FAANG companies. Got to the recruiter screen at two of them. I was drafting my "lessons learned from my failed startup" blog post in my head.

Then two things happened:

1. A customer emailed me unsolicited to say my tool had saved their firm 120 hours during an audit
2. A LinkedIn post I'd written two weeks earlier about SOX compliance documentation suddenly went viral

November MRR doubled. December it nearly doubled again. The hockey stick was real, but the five months of flatline before it almost killed the company—and my mental health.

Financial Reality: The Honest Numbers

Let me lay out exactly what the money situation looked like, because most "I quit my job" stories conveniently skip this part.

What I had when I quit (April 2024):

• Savings: $183,000 (accumulated over 6 years of high FAANG salary)
• Daniela's salary: ~$95K/year (this kept us alive)
• No kids (this matters enormously)
• Mortgage: $2,800/month (bought in 2021 when rates were low)
• Monthly burn rate (personal + business): ~$9,200

What I burned through:

• Months 1-8 (Apr-Nov 2024): Net loss of ~$68,000 ($9,200 x 8 months minus ~$5,600 total revenue)
• COBRA health insurance: $1,400/month for 6 months = $8,400
• Conference travel/exhibitor fees: ~$14,000
• Contractors (part-time designer + VA): ~$12,000
• Legal (LLC formation, terms of service, privacy policy): $4,200
• Total burned before profitability: ~$106,600

I didn't break even (revenue > personal expenses) until Month 10 (January 2025). For 9 months, I was losing money every single month.

Could I have done this without $183K in savings? Absolutely not. Could I have done this without a working spouse? Extremely unlikely. Could I have done this with kids? Maybe, but it would have been much harder and riskier.

FAANG Life vs. Indie Life: An Honest Comparison

What I Don't Tell People

This is the section I almost didn't write. But the indie hacker community has a toxic positivity problem, and I'd be contributing to it if I left this out.

The Loneliness Is Crushing

I went from an office with hundreds of smart people to a spare bedroom. No whiteboard sessions. No lunch debates about system design. No one to high-five when I ship a feature. My wife is supportive but she doesn't understand the technical details, and I can't expect her to.

I joined indie hacker communities online, but it's not the same. I hired a part-time VA, but that's a working relationship, not a peer relationship. I've started doing coworking spaces twice a week just to be around other humans.

Health Insurance Anxiety Is Real

This one keeps me up at night more than revenue. In the US, leaving a FAANG job means leaving world-class health coverage. I'm on a marketplace plan now. If I get seriously ill, the financial exposure is terrifying. This is a systemic problem with American entrepreneurship and it doesn't get talked about enough.

The Relationship Strain

Daniela and I are stronger now, but months 5-8 were rough. When you're losing money and stressed and working 14-hour days from a bedroom ten feet from your spouse, it creates friction. We had real arguments about whether I should go back to a "real job." She never said "I told you so" but I could feel the pressure.

I Am Not The Norm

For every person like me who quit and made it work, there are dozens who quit and it didn't work. You don't hear their stories because failed founders don't write blog posts. The graveyard of dead SaaS products is enormous and silent.

The Guilt

I feel guilty about my privilege. $183K in savings. A working spouse. No kids. A computer science master's degree. A network of FAANG contacts. These aren't things everyone has, and pretending my success is purely the result of "hard work and hustle" would be dishonest.

Advice for Aspiring Indie Hackers

If after all my caveats you still want to try this, here's what I'd tell myself 14 months ago:

1. Don't quit your job first. Validate the idea, talk to 20+ potential customers, and build a prototype while employed. I did 3 months of validation before quitting
2. Have 12-18 months of runway. Not 6, not 3—12 to 18. My runway was about 20 months and I needed almost all of it
3. Solve a painful, boring problem for businesses. Consumer apps are a lottery. B2B software for a specific niche is a business. "Compliance automation for mid-size accounting firms" isn't sexy, and that's exactly why it works
4. Choose boring technology. Use whatever you can ship fastest with. Technical debt is a luxury problem that means your business is working
5. Talk to customers every single day. I still do 3-5 customer calls per week. Every feature I've built came from a conversation, not from my imagination
6. Be honest about your financial situation. If you have $20K in savings and a mortgage, this path is extremely risky. There's no shame in building a side project while employed
7. Get comfortable with sales. I was an introvert engineer who hated selling. Turns out, selling a product you believe in to people who need it doesn't feel like "selling"—it feels like helping
8. Prepare your relationship. If you have a partner, have an explicit conversation about timeline, financial limits, and what "giving up" looks like. Set a date: "If I'm not at $X MRR by Y date, I go back to employment." We set ours at $5K MRR by March 2025

Survivorship Bias Disclaimer

I want to end with this because it's important.

You are reading this article because I succeeded. If I had failed—which was statistically more likely—this article wouldn't exist. You'd never hear from me. I'd be back at a FAANG company, slightly embarrassed, and you'd be reading someone else's success story instead.

The indie hacker Twitter/X bubble creates a distorted reality where it looks like everyone who tries this succeeds. They don't. Most fail. The ones who fail usually had just as good ideas, just as much talent, and worked just as hard. They just got unlucky, or their timing was off, or their market shifted, or a hundred other things outside their control.

My advice isn't "quit your job and build a SaaS." My advice is: understand the real risks, be honest about your financial cushion, validate relentlessly before you leap, and have a concrete plan for what happens if it doesn't work.

I got lucky. I'm grateful every day. And I'm terrified it could all evaporate tomorrow.

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If you have specific questions about compliance automation, B2B SaaS go-to-market, or the FAANG-to-indie transition, drop a comment. I'll answer what I can.