Setting aside for the moment that the dream and the reality of running a startup are very different things and that many of those "ideas" are likely terrible, there is clearly a significant barrier that prevents millions of people from just walking out on their day job and launching a new company. And while there are veritable armies of entrepreneurial cheerleaders banging a drum and chanting "take-the-leap!" to any aspiring entrepreneurs who will listen, I believe that there are only a handful of situations in which it actually makes sense to walk away from a decent job to launch a startup. Having zero data to back this up and having made no attempt to find any, the following sources are what I believe to be the richest sources of legitimate startups. If you don’t find yourself in one (or more) of these categories then my money would be on you keeping your day job. Startups are hard… don't jump into one unless you really mean it.