As a serial entrepreneur with two exits and 10 years doing it as a software engineer the best advice I can give you is, if you don’t have time now, while working a full time job it will be hard for you as a startup. Basically being an entrepreneur is working 100 hour weeks, alone for no pay, if your startup makes 20k in the first year it’s a success and it’s a hustle every day. The reality is that 95% of startups fail, so you go into knowing that and being comfortable with that, you will be ok, but you just don’t make something cool and people will come, timing and marketing are hugely critical skills. Building the right solution will take a lot of iteration and pivots, having an MVP out early and getting paid customers before you make any big decisions is the best strategy, if your not embarrassed by your first product you launched to late. Now if you go into this knowing your going to fail and why do it, well this is my why, it’s about growth personally, I’m an amazing software developer, I can make anything, but leadership, marketing, promotion and a ton of other skills I didn’t have while working for someone else, and I wanted freedom over financial success. Starting your own company is the hardest thing you can do, but without change you won’t grow and I’m a firm believer that you have one life to live and I don’t want to live with regrets. It took 2 years to get a salary over 20k, when I left a job making 350k a year that was a big change, but year 3 it started to grow and so did I. Also don’t go into it thinking you will raise millions the reality is that starting out, I didn’t raise 2M until I was at 2M in revenue and it was still hard, it gets easier but raising money is in reality joining an elite club, you are an outsider and not proven, you won’t get your VC membership card until you can make a lot of money, then they will let you in. You will fail, there are a lot going against you but learn as much as possible, get your solution out and iterate on it when it’s making money, and solve an easy and scalable problem, it might be something unsexy but making money is what it’s all about and it’s slow with a lot of ups and downs.
As a serial entrepreneur with two exits and 10 years doing it as a software engineer the best advice I can give you is, if you don’t have time now, while working a full time job it will be hard for you as a startup. Basically being an entrepreneur is working 100 hour weeks, alone for no pay, if your startup makes 20k in the first year it’s a success and it’s a hustle every day. The reality is that 95% of startups fail, so you go into knowing that and being comfortable with that, you will be ok, but you just don’t make something cool and people will come, timing and marketing are hugely critical skills. Building the right solution will take a lot of iteration and pivots, having an MVP out early and getting paid customers before you make any big decisions is the best strategy, if your not embarrassed by your first product you launched to late. Now if you go into this knowing your going to fail and why do it, well this is my why, it’s about growth personally, I’m an amazing software developer, I can make anything, but leadership, marketing, promotion and a ton of other skills I didn’t have while working for someone else, and I wanted freedom over financial success. Starting your own company is the hardest thing you can do, but without change you won’t grow and I’m a firm believer that you have one life to live and I don’t want to live with regrets. It took 2 years to get a salary over 20k, when I left a job making 350k a year that was a big change, but year 3 it started to grow and so did I. Also don’t go into it thinking you will raise millions the reality is that starting out, I didn’t raise 2M until I was at 2M in revenue and it was still hard, it gets easier but raising money is in reality joining an elite club, you are an outsider and not proven, you won’t get your VC membership card until you can make a lot of money, then they will let you in. You will fail, there are a lot going against you but learn as much as possible, get your solution out and iterate on it when it’s making money, and solve an easy and scalable problem, it might be something unsexy but making money is what it’s all about and it’s slow with a lot of ups and downs.