+1 on the nest egg. That's how I "bootstrapped", unsuccessfully, during Covid. And I got that close, some better timing and I might be running my own fleet of two leased feeder container vessels by now (seriously so, I already had offers for those). Bad timing kicked in, my prospective launch clients project fell through, and being bootstrapped meant I didn't have anything else in the pipeline. Which brought me to the single pivot I had budget for, and that resulted in, at most, a single person consulting business. I didn't want that, realized I like running operations much more than running a company running operations, burned the allocated nest egg and went back to employment. I am almost happy ever since!
Close call. And one other thing that nobody seems to mention either: success always comes at a price. Health, family & friendships, attitude, ethics. All of those can suffer when you're successful.
