Why Yousuf Imran, a 41-year-old techie, quit a Rs 9.3 crore Google job

Yousuf Imran, a 41-year-old tech professional, left a high-earning job at Google, where he held the position of an account executive. Imran, who has now opened up about the reasons for leaving Google's Silicon Valley headquarters, walked away from the company after earning nearly $1 million (around Rs 9.3 crore).

The techie had a strong desire to launch an AI startup, and as he put it: "I earned nearly $1 million last year as an account executive at Google, but I felt some 'FOMO' around the AI boom," Business Insider reported.

According to Imran, owning equity in his startup mattered more than the security of his high-paying job in a corporate role.

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Who is Yousuf Imran?

Imran hails from Bangladesh. He and his family moved to New York, US, when he was five years old. He grew up in Queens, NYC, and got into sales.

According to his LinkedIn profile, he started his first job as a National Account Executive at Hyrian in NY from June 2007 to August 2008.

After which, he moved to Mimeo, a privately held B2B printing, digital distribution, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. He rose to the rank of Director of Diversified Services.

Seven years after completing at Mimeo, he also worked at Sisense as an account executive. In 2016, Imran joined Salesforce as an Enterprise Account Executive - Healthcare & Life Sciences. He was associated with the firm for 3 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The turning point in Imran's career came when he joined Google in 2020, after roughly 15 years in sales. At Google, his responsibilities required him to solve business problems using Google's AI and machine learning technologies.

Six years after leaving Google, today, Imran is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Mangosteen, an AI product lab and software company.

Why did Imran quit Google?

Imran's interest in AI went beyond his work at Google. During the day, he sold AI products; at night and on weekends, he experimented with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

"At first, I was building small projects for myself. Since I'm not a software developer by trade, I'd talk to multiple AI tools to try to figure things out and, after some trial and error, get a win. Vibe coding felt kind of like a video game," he told Business Insider.

As the day passed, Imran's work on the AI tools project became more ambitious. He built several apps and side projects over about 18 months. The improvement pushed the techie to seriously mull over the opportunity to start his own business.

However, that was never the sole reason, according to him. Imran also thought of job security at Google, given the tech giant's massive layoffs in prior years.

He told the publication: "What struck me about the recent layoff rounds at Google was that they hit genuinely talented people," adding that the uncertainty of a potential layoff was another reason for his decision to bet on himself.

And in April this year, Imran finally took the call to leave a million-dollar sales career to found Mangosteen Studio, an AI product lab building go-to-market tooling for account executives.

"The thesis is simple: I spent 20 years quota-carrying at some of the biggest companies, so I'm building the tools I wish I'd had," the techie summed up.

How Imran prepared himself financially

The 41-year-old had prepared himself financially well before taking the big leap. Leaving Google was not something that Imran did impulsively.

Techie told Insider: "Google is a vast organisation with incredible resources and teams working on bleeding-edge AI. Losing that insider access and being less visible in that world was a major point of hesitation for me."

Imran had saved enough to give his business a real chance, which he did, but without making sacrifices in his lifestyle.

"I set aside $200,000 (around Rs 1.95 crore) to fund the business for two years and another $150,000 (around Rs 1.41 crore) to cover my mortgage and personal expenses during that time," he said.

At the same time, he wanted to be financially comfortable enough to focus on business building without worrying about paying bills.

"Right moment to take the risk"

"For people who feel stuck in their careers or aren't being challenged, AI is giving people an opportunity to build something of their own. The key is having domain expertise you can lean on. I wasn't a software engineer, but I spent 20 years learning the problems salespeople face," Imran asserted, as quoted by the publication.

"Today, I'm running the company as a solo founder with a small team of engineers, marketers, and other contractors. It's still early, but many sales professionals have already used our AI tools free of charge," adding that it has boosted his confidence that people are finding his work useful.

"Ultimately, I recognised that leaving Google meant leaving a lot of things behind — both financially and professionally. But my confidence and domain expertise made me feel like this was the right moment to take the risk," the techie summed up.

With inputs from agencies