I'm in a similar boat, I left my job a few days ago. I have a substantial savings though, and i'm actively looking for contract work.
I've spent 10 years trying to get side projects off the ground while staying employed, each time I've gotten a little bit closer to something, but not quite there. Here's what I've learned.
1. Tech doesn't matter, the value you're creating does. If you build something no one is using, who cares what powered it? You should use what you're already most productive in.
2. You need to start selling before you have a product, it should influence your product, or help you avoid building something useless.
3. If you want to do everything yourself you should choose your idea based on what you're capable of. In terms of sales I had a lot of B2B ideas, but I found i've been more successful with paid ads and SEO. Doesn't mean that cold calling, and networking are not effective, but it's not my personal strength. Building a business is hard enough, ramping up new skills probably isn't something you have time for.
4. You can create a market, or you can compete in an existing market. If you have to create demand, it's going to take a lot longer than your planning for.
5. Getting people to pay for stuff is REALLY HARD, you should talk to people. The idea i'm working on now came after hours of talking to potential customers, I didn't write a line of code until I fully vetted the idea.
Second that advice. In my specific case, I had a customer very interested in using my product for a very interesting use case I hadn't thought of, and it only took one pitch (and it was basically cold calling, although we did use connections to open that door).
However, because I failed to deliver on time, I've lost the opportunity to strike while the fire was hot and key stakeholders went on vacation (I do expect to rekindle interest once we're ready, but I totally blew my personal deadlines).
I've spent 10 years trying to get side projects off the ground while staying employed, each time I've gotten a little bit closer to something, but not quite there. Here's what I've learned.
1. Tech doesn't matter, the value you're creating does. If you build something no one is using, who cares what powered it? You should use what you're already most productive in.
2. You need to start selling before you have a product, it should influence your product, or help you avoid building something useless.
3. If you want to do everything yourself you should choose your idea based on what you're capable of. In terms of sales I had a lot of B2B ideas, but I found i've been more successful with paid ads and SEO. Doesn't mean that cold calling, and networking are not effective, but it's not my personal strength. Building a business is hard enough, ramping up new skills probably isn't something you have time for.
4. You can create a market, or you can compete in an existing market. If you have to create demand, it's going to take a lot longer than your planning for.
5. Getting people to pay for stuff is REALLY HARD, you should talk to people. The idea i'm working on now came after hours of talking to potential customers, I didn't write a line of code until I fully vetted the idea.
/just where i'm at right now. Hope it helps.