I backed the Oculus Kickstarter and decided VR was going to be big. I quit my games industry job, moved to a ski resort for 6 months and snowboarded and did a lot of VR experiments.
I decided I needed to partner with someone with domain expertise in an application area to really find a viable business model and ended up cofounding a VR surgical training company with an orthopedic surgeon I connected with on the Oculus forums.
Five years later we just passed 100 full time employees and the business is growing rapidly. I was lucky in how everything worked out but definitely think taking the time out was instrumental in getting to this point and it was a great experience anyway.