We left Amazon to build a startup. A 5-day RTO mandate and the AI moment pushed us to act.

• Nicole Landis Ferragonio and Joe Luchs left Amazon last year to launch a startup.
• They said Amazon's five-day return-to-office mandate and the rapid rise of AI motivated them to make the leap.
• They shared their top advice for others considering a big career move.

Nicole Landis Ferragonio and Joe Luchs first met more than a decade ago in New York City through mutual friends. Years later, while working together at Amazon, they began talking seriously about leaving the company to build a startup of their own.

Last year, Ferragonio was working as a senior manager of a 55-person product and engineering team focused on data and measurement in the Amazon Ads division. At the same time, Luchs was the global head of the Amazon Web Services and Ads partnership. As they worked together on data projects, they both observed the same pattern. Businesses hoping to use their own internal data to inform decisions were often unable to do so because the businesses' data was fragmented and inconsistent.

So Ferragonio and Luchs started talking — and began discussing a business idea that might help solve the problem they'd witnessed. Last March, Luchs resigned from Amazon to focus full-time on researching and building the company. Ferragonio followed in September, around which time she, Luchs, and their two other cofounders formally launched Datalinx AI, an "AI data refinery" they said is designed to help companies turn their data into trusted, actionable intelligence.

In January, the company raised $4.2 million in seed funding, led by High Alpha, with participation from Databricks Ventures, Aperiam, and a group of operators and founders. It plans to continue testing its product with a second group of customers in the second quarter of 2026 and is set to generate revenue this month with its first paying customer.

Ferragonio and Luchs shared why they left Amazon, how they decided the timing was right, and what advice they have for others considering a big career move.

Here is a selection of their responses, lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to leave Amazon?

Nicole Landis Ferragonio (35, lives in New York City): For me, I think the tipping point for exploring something outside of Amazon was some of the policy changes that went into effect last year, particularly the five-day return-to-office mandate. It raised some questions about how much agency you really have in Big Tech and what would be possible on our own, where we're establishing our own norms.

Additionally, my biggest motivation is building something from scratch on my own instead of within a big company, and the pace of AI adoption makes this a rare window to do something new. It felt like the right moment to make the jump.

Joe Luchs (38, lives in New York City): I think there's a point in life when you have this combination of experience plus energy, and that's a very good time to start a business. This is my fifth startup I've worked at, and I'm still young enough to put in an 80-hour week — I think that combination is good for starting a company. (Editor's note: He said he's had two successful exits — BlueKai and Beeswax)

Also, when you looked at these amazing AI technologies and what they're capable of, it started to become very clear that this tech was game-changing. Despite the fact that I had great opportunities at Amazon, the FOMO of not being able to get in on this AI opportunity was another driver to make me want to move fast here.

How did you decide when the timing was right to quit?

Ferragonio: I was really focused on getting customer input through interviews to really ensure that I had a clear product vision before making the decision to resign in September.

Luchs: I resigned in March because I just felt like I wasn't moving fast enough. This AI world is rapidly evolving, and I wanted to make sure that I immersed myself in it to understand it. Amazon is a challenging work environment, and it became very clear that having a full-time job while trying to build out a business vision was not something that I could easily manage.

How did you get comfortable leaving from a financial perspective?

Ferragonio: I think I'm in a good place financially because of the opportunities I've had both at Amazon and before to take this leap. However, since this is my first startup, it was definitely something I contemplated for a bit. That's why I was really focused on getting feedback from prospective customers and making sure we had a product we had a clear vision for before I left Amazon. As of 2026, we both now have a small salary.

Luchs: I think if you want to accrue the benefits of what startups can afford you, you often have to make some sacrifices, including short-term compensation. However, you'll never learn faster than you will in a startup environment, and I think that's worth its weight in gold.

I also think there were a lot of folks that may have thought there was a lot of safety in Big Tech, but recent layoffs suggest that's not necessarily the case.

What's been the hardest part of starting the company so far?

Ferragonio: I would say getting the operations up and running is one challenge, including things like health insurance, accounting, taxes, and incorporation. We're currently a team of four cofounders and two founding engineers, and we're actively hiring additional engineers.

On top of that, there's the challenge of balancing customer feedback in the early days. We've talked to hundreds of potential customers, and while you start to get very clear signals about what they say they want, until customers are actually using the product, you don't really know what works. The feedback changes from "here's a mountain of things that you could build" to what you should build to truly solve their problems.

So, balancing getting enough features to get customers excited without overbuilding is a delicate balance.

What advice would you give others considering leaving their jobs to start something new?

Ferragonio: Don't wait for the perfect time. There's rarely a perfect moment to leave your job, and there's always a reason to stay, especially in Big Tech.

I'd also recommend talking to as many people as you can — friends, stakeholders, potential customers — to help strengthen your conviction in your business idea.

Luchs: I think one of the biggest barriers for a lot of potential entrepreneurs is that they don't know how to do things like incorporate a company or get people health insurance. But every amazing entrepreneur that you see up there giving a keynote speech really had no idea what they were doing at one point.

What it really came down to is just, "Did this person have the conviction and the belief that they could actually see it through and figure out these problems?" And if you listen to customers and you're willing to work hard, that is half the battle. So as long as folks are willing to do those things, I think that it should give them conviction that they'll be able to figure it out over the course of time.

Editor's Note: Business Insider contacted Amazon for comment on this story. It didn't respond.