I left my large company job 7 years ago to found my own company with a friend. We initially tried our hand at a saas product then figured out we were too green at the business side of things to make it work (read we had no idea how to sell) so moved on to web-dev consulting.
Consulting has been a huge slog, we made every mistake in the book we could (and learnt from them) so we were making meagre salaries for a number of years. However we (lucked out and) met some great people who wanted to start new Saas products with us and could take care of selling and marketing while we build and product manage.
Now we've made our way back to boostrapped-saas-product-land much wiser than before. Been at it for a year now so not quite ramen profitable yet. I am poor AF, my cofounder is poor AF, we are late 30s/early 40s now.
The only reason why we come to work each day is because we have products we believe in, customers who we want to help and employees who we love (and wish we could pay more).
This has been made possible by understanding wives and families too who are happy to scrimp now for a shot at a future they believe in too.