[jcadam]

I'm in my late 30s now, and the biggest impediments to starting a business are family/financial obligations and the fact that nobody is going to fund a ~40 year old first-time entrepreneur.

So the only option is to work nights/weekends on an MVP (the slow way) while holding down a full-time job, and hope you can get enough traction on your own to attract attention/investment/etc. --> I'm finding this last bit extremely difficult. Doing dev/product work as a moonlighter is perfectly reasonable (though not necessarily fun after a hard day's work), I can sit up in bed with my laptop and hack on code until I fall asleep... but add sales and marketing on top of that and there simply isn't enough time to do things right (not to mention, you really need to be selling during standard business hours -- except you can't because you're at your day job).

[padobson]

I'd suggest finding a co-founder. This can be difficult depending on where you live. Go to a meetup and talk about your idea. Find someone who gets jazzed about it and ask them to come on board. Give them some tasks to do to prove they're serious. When they disappear and don't do them, go back to solo founding satisfied you wasted your time on comment advice from an anonymous stranger on HN.