Would you quit IB if you made $40k for your mobile game app?

I work crazy hours now in banking but back in september i sent in a little blackberry game i had made back in college and I really didn't login to check its progress online until these couple days and total sales has gone up to $40k (for a $2.99 game).

now, to further develop these games will take a load of time (certainly not doable alongside an ibanking job....and maybe doable with any other 9-to-5) ........how many of you would quit an IB job for a lower initial salary to work on stuff like this full time?

 
trazer985:
are you a 1 hit wonder or do you have a pipeline for this stuff?

Get a bit more evidence before quitting if i were you. Use your salary to pay someone else to develop your stuff.

This, also, how good are you at programming? Was the project in college just for fun? Or do you have some background in software development that would allow you to continually build these out?

"My caddie's chauffeur informs me that a bank is a place where people put money that isn't properly invested."
 
trazer985:
are you a 1 hit wonder or do you have a pipeline for this stuff?

Get a bit more evidence before quitting if i were you. Use your salary to pay someone else to develop your stuff.

Also all individual app developers are 1 hit wonders.

 

Stay in banking. If this app development becomes a legit side business you might want to move to capital markets or a smaller shop so you can do both. Side businesses provide freedom, but it is nice to have dual incomes.

 
moneymogul:
adapt or die:
Stay in banking, you must be fairly risk averse in nature or you would not be in banking to begin with

He's a 2nd year analyst.. He legit started working less than two years ago. I'd hardly call that risk averse.

Dude that's sooo legit... I'm not saying he's become risk averse because he's spent 2 years in banking but that he probably has a risk averse nature since he chose investment banking as a career path in the first place

 
adapt or die:
moneymogul:
adapt or die:
Stay in banking, you must be fairly risk averse in nature or you would not be in banking to begin with

He's a 2nd year analyst.. He legit started working less than two years ago. I'd hardly call that risk averse.

Dude that's sooo legit... I'm not saying he's become risk averse because he's spent 2 years in banking but that he probably has a risk averse nature since he chose investment banking as a career path in the first place

Investment banking as a career path? That's a stupid assumption, dude.

 

....

There's some solid advice in here guys, so thanks :)

to answer some of your questions,

I don't see myself as making any "big hits" anytime soon - these are games I made that aren't TOO unique (and probably won't get anywhere close to the success of Angry Birds, for example) so I'm relying more on quantity of games released (where, hopefully, they all make a moderate amount and it aggregates)... I'm fast at programming and can churn these apps out fairly quickly (the one I made back in college was made in a few days, and then a couple more days of testing on multiple devices by sending some free to friends to play with) so the entire thing took a little over a week to build (close to 50-70 hours). As for my background, I majored in CS and did my undergrad research on artificial intelligence so the "enemies" in my games can be pretty sophisticated, or what the teens who play my games call, "cool" lol. So there's some potential there for success but, like one of you said, I'm a little bit of a risk averse mofo and am little unsure about going on this path.

and the revenue generated is sent to our paypal accounts every month (not direct deposit) and being so busy lately, I stopped logging into my paypal account and Apple/andriod developer account a long time ago. I used to check it every 2-3 weeks until life got busy lol

 
Best Response
NotaJackass:
....

There's some solid advice in here guys, so thanks :)

to answer some of your questions,

I don't see myself as making any "big hits" anytime soon - these are games I made that aren't TOO unique (and probably won't get anywhere close to the success of Angry Birds, for example) so I'm relying more on quantity of games released (where, hopefully, they all make a moderate amount and it aggregates)... I'm fast at programming and can churn these apps out fairly quickly (the one I made back in college was made in a few days, and then a couple more days of testing on multiple devices by sending some free to friends to play with) so the entire thing took a little over a week to build (close to 50-70 hours). As for my background, I majored in CS and did my undergrad research on artificial intelligence so the "enemies" in my games can be pretty sophisticated, or what the teens who play my games call, "cool" lol. So there's some potential there for success but, like one of you said, I'm a little bit of a risk averse mofo and am little unsure about going on this path.

and the revenue generated is sent to our paypal accounts every month (not direct deposit) and being so busy lately, I stopped logging into my paypal account and Apple/andriod developer account a long time ago. I used to check it every 2-3 weeks until life got busy lol

I would probably quit after seeing if you can get one more that has at least 1/4 of the success of this one. If you quit, I think that you could conservatively pump out 10 games a year. If this one only took a week's worth of time, you could conceivably pump out 50+. This one is making ~$80k annualized, which is not bad. See if you can change the pricing to optimize revenue. You could also do an extension like Angry Birds does and sell to most of the people who bought the first one.

Good luck.

 
SirTradesaLot:
NotaJackass:
....

There's some solid advice in here guys, so thanks :)

to answer some of your questions,

I don't see myself as making any "big hits" anytime soon - these are games I made that aren't TOO unique (and probably won't get anywhere close to the success of Angry Birds, for example) so I'm relying more on quantity of games released (where, hopefully, they all make a moderate amount and it aggregates)... I'm fast at programming and can churn these apps out fairly quickly (the one I made back in college was made in a few days, and then a couple more days of testing on multiple devices by sending some free to friends to play with) so the entire thing took a little over a week to build (close to 50-70 hours). As for my background, I majored in CS and did my undergrad research on artificial intelligence so the "enemies" in my games can be pretty sophisticated, or what the teens who play my games call, "cool" lol. So there's some potential there for success but, like one of you said, I'm a little bit of a risk averse mofo and am little unsure about going on this path.

and the revenue generated is sent to our paypal accounts every month (not direct deposit) and being so busy lately, I stopped logging into my paypal account and Apple/andriod developer account a long time ago. I used to check it every 2-3 weeks until life got busy lol

I would probably quit after seeing if you can get one more that has at least 1/4 of the success of this one. If you quit, I think that you could conservatively pump out 10 games a year. If this one only took a week's worth of time, you could conceivably pump out 50+. This one is making ~$80k annualized, which is not bad. See if you can change the pricing to optimize revenue. You could also do an extension like Angry Birds does and sell to most of the people who bought the first one.

Good luck.

Thank you my friend, and thanks everyone for the advice. I guess I'll stay in this industry for a bit longer!

 

I would recommend staying in banking. You're not at a crossroads, meaning you don't have to make a decision right now to do one or the other. The app's business will be waiting for you at the end of your analyst stint. Plus the IB analyst role on your resume is good to have to fall back in the future in case your apps business ever goes downhill.

 

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