- Are you married? Kids? - If not, taking a plunge obviously becomes much more easy.
- Would you be able to remain motivated for a fairly long time while living frugally?
- Will be married very soon if everything goes well, but my partner is very supportive of me and I see it as a plus as far as starting a company is concerned
- This one is tough, and definitely a good question. I've been making quite a bit as a corporate drone for several years now and so I don't remember last time I had to question a purchase. On the other hand, I'd give up almost everything to never have to see management's face again, go through performance reviews, fill out HR questionnaires and have to play office politics for that measly bonus, all while not learning anything new as an engineer in a long time. To me, not hating myself every day is worth more than probably 75% of my salary :) From a motivation standpoint, I feel that the fear of running out of money and the terror of having to go back to writing emails 80% of my day in corpspeak will be sufficient to keep me crunching all day every day.
Cynicism apart, it's all about being able to work on something that I'm ultimately responsible for, something that someone cares about and have a purpose in mind, those three are a huge motivation to me, and have been for the past half a year I've been doing 80 hour weeks.
Reminds me of the basic programming rule of thumb where if you haven't tested a piece of code, it is to be considered broken.