Millionaire bootstrapper here.
The part I agree with is to just ask people who have done what you want to do and get an idea of the sacrifice and time commitments involved.
The part I DISAGREE with is to wait to do a startup until you’re in your 50’s. This is really horrible advice that can lead to resentment for you and negative outcomes for your family. You CAN start a business and have a family but you’ll need to be STRATEGIC.
A couple of personal tips for bootstrapping…
1. Communicate and commit to joint goal setting with your family. What are you all working towards together and why? None of us build companies alone.
2. Make your day job your first customer and biggest supporter. If you can’t then join an organization that is not threatened by entrepreneurship.
3. Identify a family friendly business model that you can test with minimal effort. I’ve always started my own businesses with my own money (Seed ~100k USD). My largest business does high seven figures and I started it with ~25k USD. This means getting in bed with a customer(s) early and charging upfront. Again see (2).
4. Set reasonable timelines for yourself. While your LinkedIn feed has friends pumping out VC propaganda remind yourself that you’re focused on actually building a sustainable business so take your time where you can. This might mean working with your wife to create a schedule for yourself where you work on the business TOGETHER a couple of hours every evening and weekends. When you bootstrap, you decide your own timeline.
5. Pivot and budget. Sometimes it’s not going to work so be prepared to put your business on autopilot (if stable), rework it or just kill it early. Cattle not pets. Businesses are tools; nothing more.
6. You will have to sacrifice something so work with your family to know what those things will be… less going out with friends, less TV/gaming/music festivals, less vacations, less spending, etc (See #1)
Best of luck
