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I am sure there is a lot more to your story that you are not sharing here, and it would be interesting to hear how you got to this point. It might help us to be

I am sure there is a lot more to your story that you are not sharing here, and it would be interesting to hear how you got to this point. It might help us to better assess how to help you in the short term. As it is, I can only speak in generalities. There is a level of insecurity to going it on your own that you need to embrace, to put it bluntly. Obviously if you quit your job and found office space then you have started down this path of embracing insecurity, but you haven't embraced it enough. You have thought of a few ideas and then knocked them all down because you are a sensible guy. You can see how they will fail, why your dream (which seems to be just "entrepreneurship", maybe) won't come to fruition, and how you will have to start over again, or whatnot. That's a tough spot, I have always started new ventures with my product idea in mind beforehand. But whether you come up with the product idea beforehand or in the middle of the process, you have to embrace the idea that you are likely going to hit hundreds of roadblocks and issues, and you will most likely fail. That's no big deal! That's part of the fun. Another problem you seem to have is, despite the few ideas and potential revenue models, you aren't solving a problem you actually have. If you were, you wouldn't be worried about the potential problems with hypothetical development paths. You would be fixing a problem, a problem you have and understand, and one you need a solution to right now. Solving a problem you have also answers the question of how revolutionary your solution is. If you hate how the rest of the world distributes widgets, and you need widgets, and you come up with a better way to distribute widgets, is this not revolutionary? Maybe "widgets" in this case are men's shaving razor blades. I don't think that razor blades are all that interesting, and certainly aren't that revolutionary. But Michael Dubin had a problem, thought up a solution that was better than what everyone else was doing, and "revolutionized" the men's razor blade industry. In reality he made it easier to buy blades online; his model can be described on a cocktail napkin with room to spare. But he did something revolutionary. He seems pretty happy. What problem do you have, regularly, that you hate? If you have no problems, what problem does your significant other have? Your best friend? Your dog? Your local municipality? Stop thinking about development paths and revenue models; those will come in time. Find something you can get behind and care about. Something where, when it doesn't work out, you won't care about how much money you didn't make, you'll only care that the problem isn't solved! The voice in your head that says "just take one of the ideas and execute on it, don't worry about the outcome" is totally right! But first, find an idea you care enough about that the outcome doesn't really matter. On an unrelated tangent, think long and hard whether you want to learn an entirely new development ecosystem while you are trying to solve your problem. C# and .Net are good. So is Python. Do you want to build the solution to your problem, or do you want to learn a new language?

aswerty 12y ago
I think your perspective overlaps mine from what you've written. And there isn't much of a back story to me. It's just the case that a lot of my wider family have gone out on their own over the years and things have gone well for them. I guess the appeal of increased agency has pushed me out the door and away from the 9 to 5 life style. And at 27 I don't think I'm risking much making this move now. My current list of ideas has slowly formed from people (family and friends) asking me "can you build an app for this thing because I hate doing xyz". Other ideas have come from things that annoy me personally. So I'm pretty happy with my thought process in regards to where I'm getting potential product ideas. Currently where I'm at is trying to decide which of these potential projects am I going to settle on. I've had ideas piling up over the last few years and now I have to strike out all but one. So now I'm in the frame of mind where I'm thinking if I do idea A it's probably not going to be the next big thing but it's quite possible I'll make a good go of it. Or for idea B I'm thinking it's a long shot but if I pulled it off it might really go somewhere. I think I'm looking for a reason to pick one idea over another. Is it just a case of doing whatever seems like the most fun (after filtering ideas based on merit)? That doesn't sound like a bad plan. Or is a small but manageable first step the right approach and leave any grand ideas for a later time when my experience in developing a product has matured? As to switching stacks. I thought about that long and hard. I've dabbled in Linux over the last two years and have picked up a little Python. I know it's not ideal adding the extra overhead of learning a new language and environment but sometimes you just have to do what your gut says. And I've been hankering to leave the MS world behind for a while now. I think once you're running Cygwin as you CLI, using a Vim emulator in Visual Studio, and drooling at the thought of using PostgreSQL as your DB of choice it's probably time to change stack. I appreciate the time you took to write out that reply.

aswerty 12y ago

I think your perspective overlaps mine from what you've written. And there isn't much of a back story to me. It's just the case that a lot of my wider family have gone out on their own over the years and things have gone well for them. I guess the appeal of increased agency has pushed me out the door and away from the 9 to 5 life style. And at 27 I don't think I'm risking much making this move now. My current list of ideas has slowly formed from people (family and friends) asking me "can you build an app for this thing because I hate doing xyz". Other ideas have come from things that annoy me personally. So I'm pretty happy with my thought process in regards to where I'm getting potential product ideas. Currently where I'm at is trying to decide which of these potential projects am I going to settle on. I've had ideas piling up over the last few years and now I have to strike out all but one. So now I'm in the frame of mind where I'm thinking if I do idea A it's probably not going to be the next big thing but it's quite possible I'll make a good go of it. Or for idea B I'm thinking it's a long shot but if I pulled it off it might really go somewhere. I think I'm looking for a reason to pick one idea over another. Is it just a case of doing whatever seems like the most fun (after filtering ideas based on merit)? That doesn't sound like a bad plan. Or is a small but manageable first step the right approach and leave any grand ideas for a later time when my experience in developing a product has matured? As to switching stacks. I thought about that long and hard. I've dabbled in Linux over the last two years and have picked up a little Python. I know it's not ideal adding the extra overhead of learning a new language and environment but sometimes you just have to do what your gut says. And I've been hankering to leave the MS world behind for a while now. I think once you're running Cygwin as you CLI, using a Vim emulator in Visual Studio, and drooling at the thought of using PostgreSQL as your DB of choice it's probably time to change stack. I appreciate the time you took to write out that reply.