Did you leave a well-paying job when you started your business?
I am trying to better understand people's motivations to bootstrap a business. Is it because you think you had a great idea and you wanted to pursue it no matter what, opportunity cost included? Or is it because the regular job you had was a dead end anyway and/or was not paying that well?
These are two different kinds of self-selections at play. I conjecture that these two sets of people may be quite different qualitatively, but would love to hear your thoughts about this.
About to in 4 months...It's not just about having a great idea, you still have to go out and get confirmation that the idea is worth pursuing and bootstrapping...
In my case, it was the third time I had been made redundant working for lrge corporations. In each case, the redudnancy was not down to any failure on my part but because the business was being taken over by another company.
By the time of the third one, I had had enough of corporate life. I had had enough of lack of job security; of office politics; of having my job "outsourced" to script monkeys with no authority to act as we had been able to act. I had had enough of people for whom I had little respect being n control of my time and my earnings.
So I left with a vague plan to teach myself how to program and set up a business. In the years since, recession hit badly, I lost my house, I tried a number of ideas which didn't work out because others got to limited markets faster than I could and I had to divert time into supporting myself. I lost three years working on a client project where the client was not committed to the project and I had to sue. I found I had diabetes. My Mum died. Someone who had agreed to fund me while I developed my own project stopped doing so and now it's white knuckle time.
I'm still glad I didn't seek another corporate job. I would be in a padded cell for my own protection by now.
If you're well paid and enjoy your job then please don't leave it until you have one of the following:
Serious traction
Enough reliable revenue to support yourself
I left mine prematurely and even though things worked out, in hindsight it was stupid.
Depends on your definition of well-paying but I prefer the lifestyle vs working for someone else even when I've been in really flexible roles.
Bootstrap usually means you keep your job until the business is making enough to justify leaving.