Maybe an Instagram or a WhatsApp or a Pinterest can explode in just 12 months (though again, it took years of development and trial and error before they got to their “overnight” successes). You can’t afford to expect miracles like that in business­to­business software, services or whatever business you might be in. Can you afford to commit for 24 months just to get to Something, to real Initial Traction? If not, you should pass. Slack went from $0 to $12M ARR st in one year (2014). Whoa. But it wasn't founded on January 1, 2014. Giving yourself 12 months to get to Initial Traction won't cut it. You'll quit. Just 12 months in, you won't have enough revenue to support yourself if you have any at all. The honest truth is that most folks can't really commit for 24 months for financial, personal reasons or whatever. That makes sense. Nevertheless, you'll fail in SaaS if you don't commit to 24 months to Initial Traction. Second: Are you able to commit to 8,760 hours a year? That's 24 x 365. I don't mean committing to being in the office 14 hours a day. That's not really necessary (that's for the Y Combinator kids). But can you really, honestly commit to obsessively thinking, worrying, and stressing about how to do The Impossible? Every. Single. Moment. Nothing else, but work. Even when you are playing with the kids. Having dinner with your husband. That's what it's going to take. If you don't have the mental bandwidth you should pass. Everything in SaaS is insanely competitive. Because SaaS is so multi­faceted, you're going to have to be the VP of Sales, Customer Success, Marketing and probably Product in the early days. There's endless drama with paying customers. You'll almost lose your best Logo accounts. You have to be intensely, painfully committed to do all this. Later, there will be fat – once you get to $5M ARR or so. It’ll get easier in many ways as you grow (and harder in others). But in SaaS, it takes a long time until then; it’s hard to get recurring revenue engines going. Third: Will you Take The Leap? This is, perhaps, most important. If you keep a mindset that you're “just trying it out” but you maintain other options, it never works. “I'll try for a while and go back to Salesforce.com if it doesn't work” or “I'll do a lot of consulting while I see if it works” or “I'll raise $500K and see how it goes.” This just never works. At least not for high­growth startups. Great founders Take The Leap. Not because they are crazy risk­takers, but because they see the risk and decide to go for it anyway. They know there will be many challenges – with funds, customers, family – but they decide to figure them out along the way. They have doubts. They have fears. They have money troubles. But they see The Future and believe in their own (eventual) Success. If you aren't ready to Take The Leap, you aren't ready to do a startup.