[swimorsinka]

Yep. I did the exact same thing ~10ish years ago - leaving my job at Google to run my own startup for 2.5 years. I burned through most of my savings. In the meantime, I watched as my former colleagues got numerous promotions and made more and more money.

I wouldn't trade the perspective I got from the experience, but it was extremely emotionally painful.

[marssaxman]

Did you launch the startup because you expected to make money, or because you thought the product was worthwhile and you wanted to build it?

[swimorsinka]

Both at the time. In retrospect, I was extremely naive, and I was building something I thought was "cool" instead of something that people would really want.