[hurtuvac78]

For any 20+ years-old readers here, if you ever think/dream about starting a business, you should learn from OP that cash and savings is paramount for freedom and creating a business later on.

> product-focused dev with 10 years experience at a-list startups [...] I don’t have enough cash saved up for significant runway. I’m 35 with family and living in the US.

The earlier you start, the more you accumulate, the more flexibility you have later. I had 12 months runway when I started mine, and it is so valuable not to look for investors and just work on your product/company when you feel pretty confident.

[ugh123]

100%.

I think we'd have better businesses with longer timeframes if people were just able to stay away from VCs for the majority of development.

[hermitcrab]

I bootstrapped my small software business with savings. I had about a year of runway. IMHO this is definitely the way to do it if you can. Don't even think about using your credit card. Obviously that doesn't help OP much. Sorry.

[sheperd209]

20+ year old reader

I guess as an engineer, building the product itself seems to be the easy part. How do you market it, find potential customers, or indeed KNOW at all that your product is a winning one?

Obviously uncertainty is a part of every entrepreneur, but I would love to get opinions from fellow engineers

[apsurd]

I found this message extremely humbling and important: https://www.pretotyping.org/