I think a better question would be are you built to run your own business? Assuming the answer to the preceding question is yes a good follow up question would

I think a better question would be are you built to run your own business? Assuming the answer to the preceding question is yes a good follow up question would be what kind of business do you want to run? I quit my well paying corporate Job about 2 years ago to go work on my own software product. I spent about 6 months working on this part time while doing contracting then ended up focusing full time on my own consulting/contracting business. Along the way I have made a number of mistakes and met with people in similar situations. Here are some random observations from my journey so far: - It's very easy to spend a lot of time building a software product that nobody really wants (Duh). - It's really easy to spend a lot of time building a software product that makes a small amount of money but not enough to justify your time. - It takes a long time to build a SASS business, budget at least 24 months. If you are later on in your career, 24 months of little to no money is a big opportunity cost. - Contracting/Consulting is at least 50% about selling & marketing yourself effectively. - It's really hard to work on a product part time even if you can devote about 2-3 days a week to it. Context switching costs a lot. - Finding a cofounder who complements your skillset, who you can trust and is actually willing to go all in for 12 months is hard. I think a lot of HN people conflate starting a company with coming up with a brilliant new product or service and building it around that. If you are at all entrepreneurial but lacking ideas, it might be worth your while doing a little contracting to see what it's like. Doing so might even provide you with some inspiration.