I didn't have savings, I worked nights and weekends until it was making a little money. I then moved on to freelance contract work, where every 3-4 months (new project) I can adjust the workload. So the more money the startup made, the less freelance I would do. Now my first project is mostly automated and it can replace about 2 days/week of freelancing, and I think I hit a revenue ceiling in the niche, but that's fine, I've since reduced my workload in the project, making it a (small) cash cow.<p>I still freelance 4 days, 1 day/week I'm building up a second venture, hoping it can replace another 2-3 days of freelance per week :-).<p>My personal burn rate is negative, so I have an infinite runway. Good thing, too, because sometimes it just takes a while for clients to build up trust. I've seen competitors come and go, they lasted 1 or 2 years. Others had to take investment money and have less control of the company now.<p>A couple of times I've invested full time in the projects for 2-3 months, hoping it would give enough of a boost to let me work on it full time, but the boost was minimal, and I burnt through a big chunk of the savings. It took a year to financially recover.<p>"Good things, sometimes, take time." - Lou Mannheim in Wall Street (1987)