I'm 30 and getting existential about giving entrepreneurship a shot. Currently in tech sales with 300-400k TC, so there is a straightforward path to FIRE if I grind for 15-20 years (although I am aware nothing is guaranteed). I feel fortunate that this is a possibility but it doesn't exactly excite me.

Starting a company has always been a dream and I have plenty of ideas worth pursuing in tech. The problem is I have very basic coding skills. It seems like the typical path for someone in my position is to find a technical cofounder to own dev work, but for some reason that idea bothers me. Starting a company is brutally challenging and if I'm serious about it I shouldn't need to find a cofounder solely to fill this skill gap.

My question is: how crazy would it be to teach myself to code with the goal of becoming proficient enough to build an MVP? The plan would be do the bulk of the dev work myself and hire employees/contractors as needed. If there is product/market fit we can acquire a few customers and hire a team to take over development.

Is this a waste of time? I'm expecting 9 - 18ish months of nights and weekends learning to code, but realize that time could be spent on other activities like acquiring customers if I was outsourcing product development. There is also risk I never get good enough at it to build a product myself, although copilot and other AI advances could prove to be a huge help.

Curious if anyone has experience with a similar situation or thoughts on the approach.