I feel you, because my story is somewhat similar to yours. I was an engineer for like 20 years, but always wanted to make my own business work. Started a couple of companies, but nothing panned out long-term, and ended up back in jobs after a year or two. Eventually transitioned into product management to focus more on understanding customers and figuring out how to build what they want.

A bit over a year ago, I quit my job and made another stab at starting a company. A friend and I built a prototype for a new product, but when we tried to get people to use it and did customer research, there just wasn't enough validation. Tried some other things, but couldn't land on anything that felt compelling enough. I even did consulting for a while, hoping that I could identify a strong enough market need through that path.

I got married last year, and we want to start a family fairly soon. So, at the end of the day, I realized that this isn't my time to build a startup from scratch. The job market is pretty hot, and I recently accepted a full-time role. I chose a startup that's late stage enough that I get a reasonable salary but early enough that there is still the opportunity for some upside.