I live in London and have no family I can turn to, no friends who could bail me out. I also take care of my girl (she's doing her PhD and has no income whilst she focuses on finishing it... matter of weeks now). We have very little savings (few hundreds, not thousands).
The way I did it was to cut all costs, everything. 2 people living in London on barely £1,000 per month covering everything. We didn't cut to a comfortable level, we cut as if our lives depended on it.
Then we individually reserve 1 day per week to figuring out how to hustle cash to stay alive... this week I've made and sold cycling caps. Last week my girl gave some English lessons to Japanese people (which looks like a recurring source of money so she's doing that next week too).
Our approach has simply been to reduce our living costs so far that the amount falls within a hustle-able amount.
And if it fails... we continue to hustle until I get a job.
Sometimes you just have to go hungry and work hard, and it seems that the early days of a startup are those times. I don't think anyone should fear it though, being brassic isn't the end of the world, it's what enables you to work on what you believe in.
Edit: I should also point out that some of this spirit has gone into the startup. That most of our computers have been given to us for free, that we have possibly the cheapest office space in London, that we get a hell of a lot done with very little cost. Our burn-rate is almost unbelievable given what we have and how we work... actually most people just don't believe it.
Yes, of course. I even considered the USA and SF in particular (health insurance, immigration and rental costs all deterred me), Chile (distance and isolation from my customers deterred me), elsewhere in the EU (language deterred me, but I did think that Greece would be a very good option at the moment) and finally elsewhere in the UK.
On that last one, a lot of the ability to survive on barely sufficient income is in making it go a long way. The majority of my users are London based and supporting the startup and keeping me personally just the right side of the line when it comes to money related things (they don't give me cash, but they help out in other ways). I've been helped out with feedback, customers, the friends investment round (where friends = very dedicated users who have become friends), coffee, cheese, washing powder (damn that stuff is expensive when you're only spending £40 per week on groceries for two), and then there's more than one dinner that has been cooked in different parts of London.
I knew all along, that if I were not somewhere the costs were dramatically in my favour, or that the opportunity is dramatically the wind in my sails, that I should stay where the support is greatest. And the support in London is extensive, not just from my users but also from a very intense and growing startup ecosystem (one of the computers in use in the office came from the one of the users of the freenode IRC room ##LDNstartups ).
So yes, considered it... weighed options, stayed put.
Reading isnt that much better. The whole of the south east is pretty much insanely expensive. Even so, moving is a double edged sword, since London and the South East is where the money is to make. So if you move out, you lessen your chances to make money. Which is exactly why its so expensive to live there.
The way I did it was to cut all costs, everything. 2 people living in London on barely £1,000 per month covering everything. We didn't cut to a comfortable level, we cut as if our lives depended on it.
Then we individually reserve 1 day per week to figuring out how to hustle cash to stay alive... this week I've made and sold cycling caps. Last week my girl gave some English lessons to Japanese people (which looks like a recurring source of money so she's doing that next week too).
Our approach has simply been to reduce our living costs so far that the amount falls within a hustle-able amount.
And if it fails... we continue to hustle until I get a job.
Sometimes you just have to go hungry and work hard, and it seems that the early days of a startup are those times. I don't think anyone should fear it though, being brassic isn't the end of the world, it's what enables you to work on what you believe in.
Edit: I should also point out that some of this spirit has gone into the startup. That most of our computers have been given to us for free, that we have possibly the cheapest office space in London, that we get a hell of a lot done with very little cost. Our burn-rate is almost unbelievable given what we have and how we work... actually most people just don't believe it.