Some of the issues you mentioned seem to arise when you do single consulting gig at a time (which I've run into before). It sounds like you have had a particularly bad experience, but I agree these are things I'm willing to put up as part of getting the company up and running. Sorry if I was unclear, but I'm primarily interested in developing a product or SaaS or even PaaS, rather than a consulting company so hopefully I wouldn't run into the issues to the extent that you did

I want to run my own business for several reasons * The challenge of building a business from ground up. * Working for something that is my own. * The idea that I can be financially free if I'm successful (but this is secondary)

I don't think I'm getting any of those from my jobs so far.

With regards to ideas that I've had that I'm passionate about definitely. Your second question is more of a problem in that I'm not quite sure how to gauge and maybe this is something that I should work on. I do have savings for a couple of months.

I've worked at several startups and been to hackathons, lectures, pitches etc.