I started my business, One Shore when I went to Ecuador in 2007.  My wife did volunteer work at an orphanage there, and I started developing what I called a "QA Site".  I thought I'd try to get freelance QA consulting work, but found it was more difficult than I thought.

Back in the states, I got a full time job, but then got laid off when the project was cancelled. Since the market was getting flooded with layoffs, and since it was what I really wanted to do, I went back to my business -- thinking that it might be easier to get freelance work if I'm actually close enough to go to meetings with clients.

But then I found out that the market was suck (no surprise), not only was no one hiring, but no one was looking for consultants.  Everyone was trying to make budgets cover as much of their operations and existing employees.  No criticism there.  No empirical evidence either, just a generization based on a gut feeling. 

In truth, I didn't really try that hard.  But I got head down into development of a project that was to be a kind of dashboard for a QA Site , which had grown to cover development & project management tasks as well, and was hydraizing into a generic team hub.  I wanted to develop the Taskboard to learn Flex & Actionscript, and to work on honing my testing skills on that platform.  On that front, it's been a success (I'm actually still working on it.) 

But the money's running out, and I need to focus on getting income.  For now, that looks like it translates into a job, but I'm hoping I can spread the idea of a QA Site to employers and potential employers.  And in the meantime, I'd like to find a startup where I can build the sort of infrastructure I'd hoped to provide with a QA Site, so even if I'm not running my own company, I'm still doing the same sort of work.