CTO considering contracting

I'm a CTO in my early 30s at a small but very successful startup in the automotive industry, earning £115k with no bonus agreement but with 6% equity fully vested over the years.

The automotive industry is not known for high salaries like those I've seen mentioned here, so I guess I'm lucky to have gotten this far early-ish in my career.

I'm currently considering switching to contracting at larger established companies to hopefully learn how others get stuff done and if possible earn a bit more as I work towards setting up my own startup in a few years.

I have spoken to some recruiters and it appears the max I'd get is around £500 per day outside ir35 for lead/Principal Engineer roles

I have used some online calculators and it looks like my take-home would be similar, but there is the downside of contracts only being short term.

Would you leave such a comfy senior position for potentially choppy waters at a big name company with a huge learning opportunity, and what is the minimum day rate you'd consider?

Alternatively, do you advice a completely different pathway altogether?