As a designer who's launching his own business (http://folyo.me http://folyo.me), I can certainly identify with this. But I also know that it's easy to be blin

As a designer who's launching his own business (http://folyo.me http://folyo.me), I can certainly identify with this. But I also know that it's easy to be blinded by the new entrepreneur's enthusiasm and see the world through rose-colored glasses. Whether you're a designer or developer, starting your own company or project is not for everybody and has numerous downsides. For example since launching Folyo, I've spent almost no time on actual design. Instead, I'm spending most of my time either coding (I've learnt Rails) or writing on the blog (http://blog.folyo.me http://blog.folyo.me) to try and drive some traffic to the site. I also didn't take on any new client projects, which means I've missed a couple nice opportunities, and also made much less money in the past couple months than I usually would. If you're a designer and you want to stop freelancing while staying independent, I would instead advise that you sell Wordpress themes, sell icon packs, or maybe write an ebook. Starting a company is definitely not the easy way out, and is not for everybody.