I had about $300, plus thousands in student debt, a couple of weeks before I took a flight up to Cambridge for the YC interview that sparked my first real entre into starting up. Starting up was a mad, year long scramble of part time jobs, slum apartments, long train commutes, various trial cofounders and ideas, writing, and, finally, one idea that stuck.

It's only something I can recommend to a certain kind of person, but the experience of crawling out of that does give a person a certain kind of strength.