I left my dream job at Google to start my own business. Sometimes I miss the security of a big tech job, but I don't regret leaving.

• Quaid Walker worked as a design lead at Google in the movies and TV teams over five years.
• He decided to leave his job in 2021 to start his own business, a watch-buying platform called Bezel.
• Walker left Google to build a product from scratch — but misses having security.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 29-year-old Quaid Walker from Los Angeles about quitting Google to be an entrepreneur. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'd always wanted to work at Google. I've been obsessed with design since I was a little kid. I remember waiting in line to get the latest iPhone when it came out.

I worked for a couple of design agencies while at design school and landed an internship in the music team at Google in 2015, working as a designer.

After my internship, I landed a converting offer to work as a design lead in the Google Play movies team in 2016. I was fascinated with how technology and entertainment came together.

I became obsessed with the feeling of making products that people use every day. When we launched something, it'd launch it to hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.

I was the design lead for Google TV

While I was there, a few folks internally looked at the landscape of entertainment for technology and saw that Apple TV and Amazon Firestick were doing amazing things. Google didn't really have a TV offering like that.

I heard some people were thinking about Google's place in the TV space, and I managed to join in with that team on the side of my main job.

I had a very supportive manager. She told me to jump onto the TV project and leave her team, even though hiring me had been a long process. She really looked out for my career.

I moved to the new team in 2018 and became one of the founding designers of Google TV. There was only a handful of us. We started with ideas on a whiteboard. It felt like being in a startup.

I worked on it over the next two years and saw the product launch on Chromecast.

It was amazing to have the opportunity to have an idea, build it, and watch it go big really fast.

I left Google because I wanted to build something again

I loved making something from scratch. Once Google TV became popular, it no longer felt like we were trying things out and seeing what worked. There were a lot of incremental changes. We had to be intentional about everything we did.

I wanted that fun feeling of building something from the ground up and moving fast. I'd always known I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I had imposter syndrome. I wasn't sure if I was qualified. Working at Google helped me feel I had the credibility to start my own business.

I bought a watch after I got my first bonus at Google in 2016 and started to get interested in that market. I found the experience of buying such an expensive item intimidating — it was hard to know which platform was safe and could be trusted.

While at Google, I had a two-hour bus commute between San Francisco and the Mountain View office. I'd spend all that time researching watches. I started to think about why there wasn't a modern, technologically forward platform that was safe to buy from like there was for sneakers.

I don't regret leaving Google

I decided to leave my job in August 2021. With my co-founders, Chase Pion and Daryl Johnson, I started my new business, an authenticated watch-market platform called Bezel, in June 2022. I was apprehensive, but my colleagues were excited for me, and I felt I had the network to return to the tech world if I ever needed to.

We built a network of angels and raised angel fundraising in 2021.

The watch market dropped significantly in 2022. We hadn't even launched and had lots of questions about whether people were still going to buy watches. We launched in June 2022, aiming to build a strong business for the next five years rather than focusing too much on the short-term markets.

We raised a seed round for $8 million in 2023. I'm happy the business is doing so well.

Learning about aspects of running a business outside of design has been exciting, such as the market, branding, and internal culture.

Running a business is more complicated and more responsibility. I'm more comfortable with being relatively new to the watch industry, but I'm enthusiastic and ask for advice when needed. Sometimes, I miss the security I had at Google, but the highs I get running my own company are much higher. I wouldn't trade it.