I am moving forward with a side-project that I hope some demographic will find useful.  I think it's important to note that I'm not motivated by money; I'm not trying to turn any kind of profit.  This project is just for my own satisfaction and to keep my skills sharp and current.

I have to imagine that a lot of startups fail because they focus on the "becoming a millionaire/getting bought" goal instead of the, more important, goal of providing a useful user experience.  I think the greatest sense of accomplishment comes from people choosing to use your application.  It's a big "thanks, we needed this" kind of pat on the back.

I'd argue that even if nobody uses it, it's still worth building.  I expect to learn a lot about transforming an idea on paper into a fully-functional website that's fit for public consumption.  I've had plenty of experience with this in the past, but with other people's ideas, never my own.

As it stands, I'm about 3 weeks into the project and I haven't written a line of code.  Thus far, it's been about planning, use cases, wireframes, domain-name choice, etc.  These are the types of things you need to be willing to devote yourself to if you plan on being successful (not that I have a success yet.)  I find a lot of people want to either hit the ground running and throw together a prototype that evolves into something that people want to use, that inevitably needs to be rewritten at the cost of a great deal of pain in data migration and other assorted idiosyncrasies.  Then there's the other type who want to have a vast landscape of foundation code perfectly architected before producing anything that any normal human being could appreciate.  The key, as always, is finding a balance.

Outside of the balance of design and time-to-market, is the balance of friends, family, work and free time.  It's really had to stay committed to a side-project when you find yourself trying to keep all of the spinning plates from crashing to the ground.  Having a pregnant wife and a 4 year old daughter make this even more challenging.

Again, it's about finding balance and making sure that you're happy doing whatever it is you decided to to do.  If you're not happy to be working on a side-project, then that's called work, and you already do that 9-5.  To be successful, it really needs to be a hobby that others just happen to be able to enjoy.  And, if you make money along the way, good for you.  You can always exceed the expectation that nothing will come from your work, the same can't be said about wanting to become an "instant" millionaire.