Hehe...well, I'd tell your "friend" to build up some savings.

My wife and I both had very nice jobs at Intuit for 7.5 years (she's now at a new company). That allowed us to build a nice nest egg. Instead of spending that on a down payment for a house, it's now the cushion that allows us to do it.

So, not having a mortgage to pay helps :-)

Living within your means to build up some savings also helps.

I wouldn't have been able to do this if we hadn't done those things. Which is why I'm a 31-year-old doing a startup instead of fresh out of college.

The savings are key. It took us a concerted 3 years to save up enough, and we were frugal. It took a great deal of luck for that three years' worth of savings to be enough.

Seems kind of unrealistic, at least given the cost of living in the Bay Area. Even if you're able to put away, say $1000 a month for 10 years, for a family of four, that's about two years of very frugal living expenses. Oh, and you have to fund the business too. Congratulations to you that you managed to do it though!

$1000/month is pretty low savings for someone who works in tech in the Bay Area. It's not unrealistic to put away $10K/month if you hold a senior position at one of the major tech companies (think about it: total comp can easily run $250K+/year, so you're taking home about $160K/year after taxes. Save $120K/year and you still have $40K/year to live on, more than most non-tech workers get). At $10K/month you can save $600K in 5 years, good for about 10 years of living expenses if you're frugal, more if you get good investment returns.

It's also not unheard of for tech workers to skip the "found a company" stage entirely and retire off their savings, with F-U money, after 10 years in the field.

If that someone is a single person or perhaps married without children, and with few or no debts it's pretty low. If they're a person with a young family and school debts I could see $1000/mo being a decent target (it's expensive to rent out here, and more expensive to buy).

The scenario you describe applies to a fraction of a fraction of even Bay Area tech workers, because being "in tech" in the Bay Area is not at all necessarily synonymous with having a >$200k/yr (total comp) job with a "major tech company." It's unrealistic to assume otherwise, and it's unrealistic to believe that people to whom the scenario does apply are the best or only source of good business ideas and execution.