You decide to start a company. You may even have a business plan, or you have taken the off-the-shelf approach of starting off as a service company with the hope of providing a product which is eventually going to sell in sufficient quantities that it will pay for further development, expansion etc. In the meantime, you are answering the phone, doing the sales, doing the hiring/firing, consultancy and even development. How long does this last? Usually as long as you are prepared to forgo having much of a life outside of it all. The chances of it working out? Not very high. But at least you tried, developed some software and kept some people employed for a while. That can't be a bad thing? And you never know...