[NotAWorkNick]

How does this sound?

Get a job and switch to making it your hobby/side-hussle/itch-to-scratch project while $company pays your mortgage etc. Doing it that way would take a lot of the 'do I / Don't I' pressure off you.

If, after polishing it up a bit in your evenings/weeks-ends it still looks promising then yeah, that is the time to decide.

If you get good PR submitters, use them to help out and build up a relationship with them... you never know when you might need a good person like that as either a first-hire or a co-investor.

I read somewhere that the retention rate for SV IT techies tanks after about 3 years.... think about that and view the option of "taking a day job" not as a defeat but rather in the way of "hey, I've just got my own personal seed-funder for the next three years or so".

Best case - You get to hand your notice in after 6 months. Worst case? You polished your project and nurtured it for 3 years .... is it viable or not?