If you are worried about your barrier of entry being so high, why don't you try and lower it? You have ruled out doing any hosting yourself, but there are stil

If you are worried about your barrier of entry being so high, why don't you try and lower it? You have ruled out doing any hosting yourself, but there are still things you could do. For example, you could try and make your application as easy to install as "apt-get install <myawesomeapp>". Or you could try and partner yourself with an existing VPS provider: you can forward them customers, and they can profit on the hosting and lower the barrier of entry for you. Mostly though I would recommend just going for it. I mean, what is the worst that can happen? Just refund everyone's money if they get unhappy. You might lose time, but you probably have a lot to gain.