I think you are a bit all over the place. I would suggest a few things:
Go through Naval's podcast "How to get rich". Listen it once a month for 4 months. Make notes and see how his suggestions apply to you. Focus on the things that you disagree with and understand why do you disagree with them.
Now on to my feedback:
You are worrying too much about big competitors getting you out of business or idea already launched. Unless your product has a very small market, there is always opportunities for new players. Looks at the instant messaging space over the time we have had IRC, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Google Chat, Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack and there will be a lot more.
If an idea doesn't work out, you don't lose 2 years. You would have learnt a lot through this time. You are investing in your learning and capabilities.
Think of startup as a series of sprints. You sprint, strategize, sprint, strategize.
So my high level suggestion would be:
Start building what you want to build right now. Don't wait.
Don't think about doing startup in binary terms. Figure out which product you want to build next and try to find whatever time to make progress on it. During this phase if you have to sort out personal things do that. If you need to take a job to support finances do it. These are things that you have to take care of along the way. There will always be news stuff when you have taken care of the personal and finance part. Don't lose focus on your startup and keep chugging along.
If you get a job, make sure you don't use company hardware to build it. Make sure that there are no clauses which make products developed on your personal time as company property.
Go through Naval's podcast "How to get rich". Listen it once a month for 4 months. Make notes and see how his suggestions apply to you. Focus on the things that you disagree with and understand why do you disagree with them.
Now on to my feedback:
You are worrying too much about big competitors getting you out of business or idea already launched. Unless your product has a very small market, there is always opportunities for new players. Looks at the instant messaging space over the time we have had IRC, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Google Chat, Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack and there will be a lot more.
If an idea doesn't work out, you don't lose 2 years. You would have learnt a lot through this time. You are investing in your learning and capabilities.
Think of startup as a series of sprints. You sprint, strategize, sprint, strategize.
So my high level suggestion would be:
Start building what you want to build right now. Don't wait.
Don't think about doing startup in binary terms. Figure out which product you want to build next and try to find whatever time to make progress on it. During this phase if you have to sort out personal things do that. If you need to take a job to support finances do it. These are things that you have to take care of along the way. There will always be news stuff when you have taken care of the personal and finance part. Don't lose focus on your startup and keep chugging along.
If you get a job, make sure you don't use company hardware to build it. Make sure that there are no clauses which make products developed on your personal time as company property.