American engineers are lucky to earn enough to be able to save up and do stuff like this, like on $200k you can save enough to really try a start-up for a year or two. Whereas in Europe we're lucky to get $80k in the same jobs, and then the state steals half of that :/
In Germany you can get 6 months of unemployment insurance when starting a startup out of unemployment. Or get 6 months paid when starting a startup out of Uni. Then you could get various public funding opportunities like a startup bonus (for example 50K public funding for 50K private investment in an innovative company in Berlin).