OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

I'm 36, married with numerous kids, career blub programmer with BigCo, and I've had enough.

Friday I notified my boss I would not be there come March, and this weekend my wife and I started work on our new project (I'd forgotten how well we work together). This gives us six months to prepare our family for life beyond BigCo, and I can't wait.

For the first time in ages I'm relaxed and excited about the future. Thanks to everyone here for the inspiration and big thanks to my awesome wife.

Woot. What are you going to build?

pg, this is all your fault.

Come on...which bigco? And which part of the world do you live in?

Regardless of YC involvement, you can still be demoing to investors in March. It takes a little more effort--and you'll have to do the demo about 30 times to reach the same number of investors--but you can actually start a company without YC. ;-)