Expanding on the "both/and" advice from elsewhere in this thread, I'd recommend saving for the backpacking trip first with a boring-yet-lucrative consulting gig

Expanding on the "both/and" advice from elsewhere in this thread, I'd recommend saving for the backpacking trip first with a boring-yet-lucrative consulting gig, then building the SaaS product during your downtime on the road. It'll fix your expectations and your finances all in one go. SaaS businesses take at least a year or so to ramp up to the point where they can reliably support you (even on the beach in Cambodia). It'd be a shame to have to cut your trip short because the thing you'd built wasn't immediately successful. With luck, it'll be the thing that finances your second lap around the world three years from now. [edit] And yeah, don't build microservices. Especially for a B2B SaaS. Scaling problems for products with a price tag are things that come with tons of money attached. Use that to scale when and if it becomes a "problem". For now, build a boring Rails app on PostgreSQL or whatever has the least chance of falling over while you're halfway down the Inca Trail.