Can You Afford to Quit Your Day Job? How to determine if you can afford to work on your startup full-time.

When Katie Finnegan and Erica Bell quit their day jobs at a New York-based consulting firm in May 2012 to work on their online fashion startup, Hukkster, they hadn't raised a single cent of funding. The company wasn't even earning any revenue when the twentysomethings decided to jettison their steady paychecks for the promise of startup stardom.

"We were bootstrapping with our own savings to build out the first version of the website," Finnegan says. "It was not the safest leap of faith."

Ballsy? Yes. Impetuous? Perhaps. Recommended? Not always. Dumping a paying job to launch an unproven business concept with no profits is a big risk. But some founders do it anyway, and for entrepreneurs who are looking to secure investors, it may be a must. "Investors are going to want you in there full-time," says Chris Carey of Brooklyn's Chris Carey Advisors. "They want to know that you're working 100 hours a week on your idea."