I’m glad you’ve found success balancing a side hustle with your corporate job. Indeed, starting a business full time requires that you have enough cash available that you can cover your business and personal expenses for a long enough time to allow your business to take off.

That proverbial “runway” is just like a real runway. If you try to get a plane to take off you better have a runway long enough for the particular plane and how heavily loaded it is. Similarly, if your new business is one with few costs, your financial runway need is smaller than if your business is capital-intensive and/or requires a longer time to start generating profits, you need much more cash on hand.

The corollary of all this is that if you have more than one idea for a business, you can start one that requires less capital and less time to profitability first, and then leverage the eventual profits from that one to fuel a second business that requires more cash.