devs who decided to quit job and start own business. how you are today?

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all good. The start was a freaking nightmare but things settle more and more as I grow.

I took the path without any partners - meaning I am no contractor.

Every customer is self aquired and I get 100% of everything. Money, blame, stress and fame.

Started about half a year ago. Next step is to get some kind of part time employee/ freelancer for more throughput so things start scaling.

Don't get me wrong, tough road. Emotional rollercoaster. But worth it.

Things could be a lot easier if I just freelance and take orders from some middle man whose job is to get me to work, but my goal is to create a company with my own network of happy and recurring customers.

Kind of hard for me to answer the question though. I can tell you that I have never learned in such a fast pace (which I really enjoy), and I learned how to set priorities (work and private).

sorry that my answer reads bad. had a lot of thoughts on how to answer and just spammed some sentences :D

Good thanks for asking. Making way more $$$ than before and have alot control over my worktime.
More $$$ always comes with a sacrafice tho. In my case way more responsibility.

Short version: I tried it and I'm giving up. Several years ago I worked as an early hire at a VC-funded SF startup in a non-coding role, where I saw how much more money, respect, freedom and satisfaction the devs got out of working there. I had programmed in high school and studied CS topics on my own, so I decided to become a solo consultant. I watched a million tutorials and eventually got a client. I've had 7 total but the flow dried up...I was so lazy about sales/marketing, relying on referrals (from mostly academic clients). So now I'm looking for a jr dev position in my old age. Anyway, going it alone can be done, I just did it all wrong.

@dotnope good point. marketing yourself is key and takes up a lot of time. working on projects and getting new orders in at the same time comes with a lot if effort.

Sorry to hear that it did not work out for you.

@nebula Thanks. Actually I would follow up with this: specialize as much as you need to. I was doing everything that came up. "Is it technical and you don't know where to start? Yeah sure I'll figure out how to fix it." Which gave me all the challenge I could ask for and a sense of accomplishment, but how do you market "I can figure anything out"? Hard to convince people of it. Instead I should have chosen a stack and said "I can work on things that resemble this stack" even if that meant saying no sometimes.