[RowanH]

> Something about the side hustle continues to lure people into thinking it’s a way out, until they burn themselves out and sabotage their day job while doing it.

Sample size of 1

- Side hustle #1 funded my toy habit for a long time and gave me the confidence "I can build & support something from start to finish".

- Got to C Level working for 'the man' (aka the board). But regardless of level you're never in control of your destiny, especially with the eventuality of PE. For some that's okay, for others that's not...

- Which lead to Side Hustle #2. Left my day job 3 years ago....

Now have some of the best in our wee niche using our product, a number of team members, gradually growing it in bootstrapped fashion.

No investors, no funding rounds, no chasing growth targets. As "pure" as it can get - adding features, capturing more market, getting positive word of mouth, picking up new countries, finding new edge cases, adding new package upgrades. I think we're around 40% of new clients are referrals/word of mouth.....

In the first 6 months of turning billing on you're going "what the heck am I doing...." now I'm "oh I wouldn't give this up..." immensely rewarding bringing other new people into the business, and seeing that flow through to the finished product for our clients.

At least in NZ, side hustles are the genesis of a lot of tech companies.