[achow]

I echo all of this post, especially the part about wrong mental model. Me too after reading listening to all success stories thought that it would be a fairly effortless, all I have to do is build a great product and users and investments will coming knocking to the door. And why not, that's what led to fairly great success in corporate world - focus on building great stuff, heads down do things that you are great at, and good things will follow.

I took couple of years off, built seemingly good product along with 3 others but it did not go anywhere.

Selling and hustling is hard.

I depleted and reset my savings and wealth by half a decade or so. Initially I found it tad difficult to get back to same or better position in corporate world; though eventually after couple of years it happened.

But inspite of all this I'm glad I did this as otherwise I would have always led a regretful life (what if).

As OP says next time I would be doing this with my eyes wide open and with a 'default dead' [1] mindset.

[1] Default Alive or Default Dead? http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html#:~:text=If%20it's%20defa...