I have been an IC all my career and love writing code. I am not a hater of corporate environments, but I wanted to build something on my own for a long time. I

I have been an IC all my career and love writing code. I am not a hater of corporate environments, but I wanted to build something on my own for a long time. I have quit 4 months ago to work on my startup, solo. I hope my experience working solo can shed light on how working solo is (If you plan to go into consulting and not build something for yourself, the experiences could be different): 1. Unlimited technology choices, but at the same time considering costs have to backoff from ideal choices. For example: I can't spin out a microservice for every damn small thing, consolidate so I can save on compute costs. 2. Working alone is hard, really hard. Try to spend time with your partner, former co-workers etc. 3. It not just writing code all the time. Consider the effort and costs on the corporate side of things. Incorporating, issuing stock, compliance, taxes, bookkeeping, prospective investor meetings, insurance etc. They all take time or money. 4. Having a partner who has a full-time job really helps. My wife works full-time and we have our health insurance figured out and have a regular stream of income to take care of our necessities. 5. You are always on-call and have to plan your vacations or at times skip one based on your business needs. 6. You have to sell. Sell to your friends, co-workers, your neighbors - anyone who you think can use your product. It's a little awkward at time, but I joke it off and try selling again. 7. 14-16hrs a day is pretty usual on weekdays. I don't work on Sundays and work late night on Saturdays. Support from family is pretty important. 8. Lastly, expect to be a generalist. Plan to work on everything - product management, UX design, frontend, backend, infrastructure, documentation, graphic work, video editing, blogging, marketing, sales calls, demos, everything you can possibly imagine to stretch your runway.