I desperately want to start my own company, but I am not sure how to best go about it without gambling my families finances. I'm hoping for some advice or relavent anecdotes that might help me. My situation in a nutshell:
I am building a B2C website after work and on weekends, however it is very slow going and at this speed I think it's going to take at a minimum 12 months before I have something to launch with. This is frustrating on it's own, since I want quit my job and build something that I can pour myself into, but I'm never able to make any meaningful progress between work and family. I really beleive in this idea, however I am trying to be realistic.
I have a wife and 2 young children, and my wife is getting upset that I spend all my free time working on my side project instead of hanging out with the family. So it's getting to the point where something has got to give. My initial thought is to quit my steady decently paying full time job, and move to contract work. The idea being that since that generally pays more (at the cost of dependable income), in the down time between contracts I could focus on getting my MVP ready.
I'm not having a lot of luck finding contracts though, since I am a generalist and the contract roles I've seen want you to be a specialist (usually in some web technology I haven't used much). I've also looked into places like Upwork, however they don't look like they pay enough to be worth the time and effort it would require to put in.
Am I just being naive? Is it a requirement to risk my families savings on my business idea? Do I just need to suck it up until my kids are not dependant on us anymore? What am I missing?
* I understand there will be some financial risk no matter what, I'm just very much trying to avoid the situation where in 6 months time, I have to say "Welp, that didn't work. Oh yeah, we are also broke."
* I am based in Melbourne, Australia, if that makes any difference to my options.
I am building a B2C website after work and on weekends, however it is very slow going and at this speed I think it's going to take at a minimum 12 months before I have something to launch with. This is frustrating on it's own, since I want quit my job and build something that I can pour myself into, but I'm never able to make any meaningful progress between work and family. I really beleive in this idea, however I am trying to be realistic.
I have a wife and 2 young children, and my wife is getting upset that I spend all my free time working on my side project instead of hanging out with the family. So it's getting to the point where something has got to give. My initial thought is to quit my steady decently paying full time job, and move to contract work. The idea being that since that generally pays more (at the cost of dependable income), in the down time between contracts I could focus on getting my MVP ready.
I'm not having a lot of luck finding contracts though, since I am a generalist and the contract roles I've seen want you to be a specialist (usually in some web technology I haven't used much). I've also looked into places like Upwork, however they don't look like they pay enough to be worth the time and effort it would require to put in.
Am I just being naive? Is it a requirement to risk my families savings on my business idea? Do I just need to suck it up until my kids are not dependant on us anymore? What am I missing?
* I understand there will be some financial risk no matter what, I'm just very much trying to avoid the situation where in 6 months time, I have to say "Welp, that didn't work. Oh yeah, we are also broke."
* I am based in Melbourne, Australia, if that makes any difference to my options.