Should I give up?
CatDancer: In his book The Millionaire Course, Marc Allen writes that "Your business goes through the same three stages that all living things go through: infancy, adolescence, and maturity"."When your business is in its infancy, have you to care for it constantly.  You expect nothing from it, and have to support it completely.  Care for your infant business as you would care for your infant child -- with loving attention, with no expectation of any reward... your infant grows at its own pace; sometimes slowly, sometimes instantly, in a quantum leap.  As James Allen says, Be not impatient in delay, but wait as one who understands.  Your infant business will soon grow to adolescence.""The adolescent business can take care of itself, but it certainly can't take care of its owners.  In fact, the owners may still need to come in with some additional support if the adolescent stumbles for some reason, maybe because it's trying something unproven or risky or new...""If you keep focusing on your dreams, and if you're patient and persistent, your company will grow into maturity and be able to support you and many others abundantly."In the comments people are doing the math to calculate that you need 2K a month to live on.  Whatever the amount is, it is then your job to provide yourself with that income to support yourself, separate from your business.  You shouldn't expect or depend on your infant business to provide you with that 2K, because you don't know how long it will take for your business to grow up.  That your infant business isn't yet supporting you isn't a reason to give up, it just means that your business hasn't grown up yet.In http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html Paul Graham writes: "A couple days ago I finally got being a good startup founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful."Being relentlessly resourceful means that you come up with the 2K a month.  Get some investors.  Do some contracting work.  Work nights and weekends.  Hold a yard sale.  Deliver pizza.  Do whatever it takes to make 2K a month, separate from your startup.Your other question was should you sell your 10K of stocks to support yourself.  Because you're in the B2B space, you're doing sales.  Dave Ramsey notes that people don't buy from a desperate salesperson.  Desperate salespeople smell bad.  People buy from relaxed, confident salespeople.  So, the answer is, in your particular situation, you should start making the 2K a month to support yourself before you need to sell the 10K of stock.  Because, with the 10K in reserve, you won't be feeling desperate, you'll be feeling confident.  And with that confidence you'll be able to make sales.How to succeed in your business is fairly simple :-) do what your business needs you to do.  If your business needs you to make 2K a month to support yourself, then go do that.  If your business needs you to make sales, then do the things you need to do for yourself so that you can be a confident salesperson.  And sooner or later, your business will grow up, and you'll reap the benefits.