I was saved by a consultancy that dropped in my lap, a foreign company looking for a local representative to manage a key account. Basically 10-20 hours a month

I was saved by a consultancy that dropped in my lap, a foreign company looking for a local representative to manage a key account. Basically 10-20 hours a month doing some product/marketing and account management stuff within my area of expertise but not related to my startup. It mainly just ate into my weekends, with a few meets mid-week. Since then I have noticed others doing the same type of work to support themselves while their businesses are in the early stages (be it startup or trad. business). Im relatively old and have a family withs kids in school, for me the hardest part of founding a startup was the financial strain. We extended way past our initial runway by not taking salaries, eroded our savings. It was difficult, but I had confidence in the business, we had responsibility to our customers* and this gig saw me through the really dark times. We are a success case (our startup is seeing a lot of traction and funding now isnt an issue), but this is an area that I think needs more attention. I can imagine there were potentially great businesses that failed because of this. Startups (esp B2B ones) take time to find their feet. Older founders can eat ramen but you cant feed it to your kids. PS On general advice id tend towards activities that arent too strenuous and are different to your main tasks within the startup. Eg developing part time while coding full time for your startup id imagine would be a huge drain. * Our startup has an impact aspect. You couldn't with a heart abandon it, even if you were to roll back your services in a professional manor.