Find a way to do it. If you don't have kids, do it before you have kids -- it is a lot easier. Possibly find a way to get Product License+PS revenue to keep up

Find a way to do it. If you don't have kids, do it before you have kids -- it is a lot easier. Possibly find a way to get Product License+PS revenue to keep up current cash. So I was on Wall Street for 11yrs (and 3yrs Wall St consulting before that.) One day, I decided i'd just do it. So I did. I found a good dataset for a big problem (Tuberculosis) with a use case (synchronous diagnosis) in a field where I had an advantage (CV+ML driven diagnosis) and convinced a customer to fund development in exchange for equity. Cool think about some of these problems is that you can give away your product (our approach was to charge wealthier countries and give it away free in poorer countries (though everyone would also "pay" via data contribution.) The product worked. I teamed up with a Radiologist and MPH co-founder and we did it. The metrics were good. We were even on the acquisition block for a while. The story is a bit sad later on because we became mired in IP issues that tripped up the acquisition, but I don't regret the venture. Not everyone can succeed in addressing a disease with 300MM victims. So just trying is a success in my book. And your solution need not be some cutting edge cure -- sometimes ancillary things like fast/cheap diagnoses is enough because the problem is often identifying early rather than actually curing. Making a diagnosis, even an initial diagnosis on a two-stage diagnosis, cheaper/faster is very much in the change-the-world territory. If you have a laptop, some GPUs, and the ability to sell your vision, you have all you need. Side note: I wasn't rash in leaving Wall St. (a la Fountainhead) -- I waited to get my bonus before resigning and I resigned in grace by lining up a replacement for myself and ensuring there was a transition and my bosses were happy. One of my bosses even offered to invest in my startup. I also lined up a dataset before leaving.