[jstewartmobile]

If you have "safe money" from your teaching job, and you're confident that you have the chops, block off some time and make a product.

Most places are just crabs in a bucket. I don't know if that is limited to tech, or just a side-effect of office work. I do know that you don't win with crabs in a bucket.

Customers are different. If you solve their problem at a fair price, they will love you.

[mcrdev]

Over the years I've built several apps and websites but none of them have generated much revenue. The most money I've made was by selling shareware apps for Palm pilots between 2000 and 2002 but that died with the platform.

My problem is I can't seem to find a problem to solve that people would pay for.

[zapperdapper]

> The most money I've made was by selling shareware apps for Palm pilots

Could you build similar apps but targeted at iOS or Android?

> My problem is I can't seem to find a problem to solve that people would pay for.

Hmm, there is a lot of software by lone wolf developers or very small companies that sells - and quite well in some cases. I can think of half a dozen examples off the top of my head. I had a friend who started a business writing software teaching maths to primary school kids. He wrote games with a maths learning element using PureBasic on Windows. He did very well out of it from what I remember. You could look at apps like Ulysses which has gone from a lone wolf app to a small software company and makes a lot of money. "The Journal" still sells like hotcakes but is Windows only and looks a bit long in the tooth now. You don't necessarily need to do something complete new - just different.