[ahmedbaracat]

Thank you for the response. Quite informative. Special thanks for the PS, I am actually pursuing a Master's degree and, like you, I am planning to start my own company or work for a startup that I think is solving an important problem. I also started to get tired of the academic life.

For me, being successful as a startup founder, is to bootstrap (I don't want to loose the freedom of making my own decisions) a business that is solving a "real" problem for enough users to have reasonable income. I am not planning to scale just for the sake of scaling or to raise fund for expanding. I am making the conscious decision to have a sustainable business with no exit strategy.