Why We Left Employment to Build Something of Our Own

Why We Left Employment to Build Something of Our Own 

Nobody hands you a moment. There's no dramatic resignation letter, no single conversation where everything changes. For us, it started the way most good things do - messing around with something we loved and slowly realising it could be more than that.

How It Started

Matt was teaching in education. Tom was freelancing for a Minecraft hosting company. On paper, two people with reasonably sensible careers doing reasonably sensible things.

In practice, we spent most of our evenings playing video games together, the way we had done since we were six years old at the same youth club. At some point, neither of us could tell you exactly when the conversation shifted from what we were playing to what we could actually build. The skills were there. The passion was obviously there. The evenings were already being spent on it anyway.

So we decided to make it count.

The Scary Part

We're not going to pretend the financial side isn't terrifying. It is. Leaving a salary behind and betting on something you're building from scratch is genuinely uncomfortable, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or doesn't need the money.

But here's what we've learned after four years: the fear doesn't go away, you just get better at working alongside it. The uncertainty that felt paralysing at the start becomes part of the texture of the thing. You learn to trust the work, trust the team and trust that if you keep showing up and doing it properly, everything works out in the end.

It does, by the way. Work out in the end. Not always in the way you expected, but it does.

What We'd Say to Anyone Sitting Where We Were

The evenings you're already spending on something you love, they're telling you something. The skills you've quietly built up while doing something else, they're not an accident. The conversations you keep having about what you could make if you just had the time, you have the time. You're just spending it on someone else's dream instead of your own.

We started Big Yellow Fishes because two friends who met at a youth club at age six never really stopped playing, building and creating together. We just eventually decided to take it seriously.

Four years in, a growing team and some of the most exciting projects we could have imagined working on. Not bad for a couple of lads who just wanted to do something productive with their evenings.

If you're thinking about making the jump, our only advice is this - don't wait for the perfect moment. There isn't one. Just start.