From Google to founder: How a safety net made a ₹3.3 crore exit possible to pick founder life

Walking away from a role paying nearly ₹ 3.3 crore a year may sound irrational to most, but for Kevin Naughton Jr, it was a calculated step toward a life he actually wanted. The New York-based software engineer, who earned close to $350,000 (about ₹3.34 crore) annually at Google, said he sensed from day one that the job was not his endgame.

“It was kind of on the first day. I always knew I wanted to work for myself. I always knew I was going to leave,” Naughton Jr said in a video shared on social media.

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A wake-up call after losing his father

While he described Google as “the best nine-to-five job” he could have had, the work did not align with his long-term goals. The real turning point came in 2022, when his father passed away. “That was like a really big… wake-up call. You have to do what you want. You have to be happy every day,” he told creator Jugal Bhattacharya (Jugl Bhatt) in an interview.

Building a safety net before the leap

Naughton Jr, who has previously worked at Amazon as well, emphasised that his exit was not a reckless gamble. He had saved enough to cover several years of expenses, giving himself a runway to test his startup idea. A close friend’s advice sealed the decision: if he could survive three years without a salary, he should use that time to try building his own business, and return to employment only if it failed. "If you don't need to work for three years... you would just go back to a job," his friend told him.

READ ALSO: Google employees demand severance promise amid layoffs; 4,500 workers ask Pichai for voluntary exit packages

From Google to founder: Ferryman.io

Eight months after resigning, Naughton Jr launched Ferryman, a SaaS tool that auto-distributes content across platforms like LinkedIn, X, YouTube and Threads, solving a problem he faced as a creator. Within about three months, the product crossed $600 in monthly recurring revenue, with users paying and staying, he wrote on LinkedIn.