> Are all startups at my age generally side hustles that become profitable enough to quit my day job? Maybe yes. But that's only the first step. 40yo here, ma

> Are all startups at my age generally side hustles that become profitable enough to quit my day job? Maybe yes. But that's only the first step. 40yo here, married, 3 kids (5yo, 3yo, 1yo), and a mortgage. I am more in the risk-averse side. I was a CIO ('I' as in 'investment') in a family office. In 2019 I started building a document processing service (eg merge, encrypt PDFs) as a side hustle. It grew slowly and steadly, until, in May 2022 I got enough recurring revenue to ask my employer to reduce my load to half-time, taking a paycheck cut. In the other half of the day, I am working in a more ambitious idea. I expect that at the time I am ready to launch, the income from my document processing service will be near 100% of my full-time FO paycheck, so I am taking very little financial risk. Two resources that would have helped me a lot when I was having the same questions as you are: - Rob Walling's "Stair Step Method" https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-bootstrapping/ https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-b... - Dan Hulton's "Evaluating Modest SaaS Business Ideas" https://greaterdanorequalto.com/evaluating-modest-saas-business-ideas/ https://greaterdanorequalto.com/evaluating-modest-saas-busin...