How did you pay your bills when you started/joined your company?

I've accumulated some money, around $100K from by bonuses in finance programming, and used that money towards paying for my life (instead of getting a mortgage, and risking a few years setback on that).

As a programmer or designer, it's not too distracting to pick up small one-off jobs to just cover living expenses. I self funded for a long time just helping people get Wordpress sites up.

I cut my expenses to the bare bones. And I mean cut. I barely ate (lost 25% of my body weight), stopped doing anything fun, cut off friends (after telling them what I was doing), etc.

There's really no magic to it. Starting a business is tough.

You could dip your toes into the startup world by working at a funded startup. It's a lot less intense than starting your own company and has the added benefit that you'll get to see how startups are different from large companies.

i worked a grave yard shift while showing up to the office everyday for the 1st year of my company. 7 years later we do 8 mil in revenue..