I quit my job six weeks ago. I've had an idea for a web site sitting in the back of my brain for several years now. Amazingly, no one else has done it. I put up an ad on craigslist asking for someone to pair-program with me. We've been pairing 4-5 days a week.
We expect to go live next week.
I'm scheduled to start a Ph.D. in another six weeks. I could delay. It's a tough choice. Getting my first toe in the entrepreneurial water has been exciting and fulfilling. I'm getting to do things "the way I always wanted to".
If you want to be an entrepreneur, and you don't need a PhD to do it (e.g. you aren't starting a biotech company), then for the love of all that is holy, don't start a PhD program. Quitting is like gnawing off your own leg.
Thanks for the advice. The reason I want the Ph.D. is to become a professor, and the reason I want to be a professor is to be paid to indulge my curiosity and to teach (I love both).
Delaying a year to do this site is definitely an option I'm considering. Cooking Indian food in my kitchen has got to be way cheaper than gnawing off my own leg. ;)
Keep in mind that very few people make it through a PhD program with a good enough outcome to become a professor, and it usually has less to do with intelligence, than with luck, social skills, and the ability to "play the game". And if you do manage to get a faculty position (somewhere...), you've got another six years of hard work ahead of you before you've got any true claim on autonomy. Then you get paid dirt for the rest of your life.
You can always go to grad school later, but you've only got so many years of youthful enthusiasm and the ability to live cheaply. And once you have a wife and kid(s), it gets a lot harder to start a company. My advice is to take the massive-upside risks when you're young, and leave the low-upside risks for later.
We expect to go live next week.
I'm scheduled to start a Ph.D. in another six weeks. I could delay. It's a tough choice. Getting my first toe in the entrepreneurial water has been exciting and fulfilling. I'm getting to do things "the way I always wanted to".