I am totally enjoying it as the light at the end of the tunnel is almost there and have learned a bunch. But I'm not yet ready to pull the cord and go full time until it has replaced my current income and then some.
The metric to watch isn't how secure it makes you feel. It's growth. A startup is a company designed to grow.
One advantage a full time job offers is you can afford to take the risk of building something daring that takes more time to identify. A funded startup pressured for growth might otherwise miss this part.
The constraint of having little free time makes you work only on what's important. Which incidentally is how some of the best skunkworks projects produced results. Constraint is an advantage in creativity.
As for coping with the emotions, launch sooner rather than later so you know how far off you are from something useful. One of the worst emotions is launching late and realizing you could have stayed in a mode of building without feedback nearly infinitely. The launch is good training for the emotions because you'll realize how unreliable they can be in the absence of data. And always have at least one active user.
And exercise, and grow disciplined with sleep, preferably starting the day hacking because not only does it awake your mind but you give more of the benefit of new ideas to your startup rather than the day job.
Unfortunately I can't pay the mortgage based on revenue projections :)
I have noticed that by being constrained on my time that I have not touched frivolous features. The core product is quiet lean but is working great so far as an MVP.
The metric to watch isn't how secure it makes you feel. It's growth. A startup is a company designed to grow.
One advantage a full time job offers is you can afford to take the risk of building something daring that takes more time to identify. A funded startup pressured for growth might otherwise miss this part.
The constraint of having little free time makes you work only on what's important. Which incidentally is how some of the best skunkworks projects produced results. Constraint is an advantage in creativity.
As for coping with the emotions, launch sooner rather than later so you know how far off you are from something useful. One of the worst emotions is launching late and realizing you could have stayed in a mode of building without feedback nearly infinitely. The launch is good training for the emotions because you'll realize how unreliable they can be in the absence of data. And always have at least one active user.
And exercise, and grow disciplined with sleep, preferably starting the day hacking because not only does it awake your mind but you give more of the benefit of new ideas to your startup rather than the day job.