You're right. Negative experience is valuable as well. I mysefl is now in a somewhat similar situation: I convinced my wife and my friends to try to implement a web-service I had in mind with a small working prototype. They agreed to suppor me financially and I quit my day job and took a year for now to finish it and have at least beta version running.

I should say that I feel really grateful and really appreciate this opportunity and what my friends are doing for me.