Quickly building up a portfolio and applying for gigs worked well for me. One thing I noticed was that small companies and startups are impressed if you've buil

Quickly building up a portfolio and applying for gigs worked well for me. One thing I noticed was that small companies and startups are impressed if you've built one or two cool apps whereas larger companies are more interested in the size and breadth of your portfolio; after creating one fairly complex site I was able to get offers as the lead designer or developer at tons of startups, but I couldn't get hired as even a junior developer at more established firms -- the usual response was "Can you show us what else you've done?" and I had nothing to show them.