[gwbas1c]

> I'd like to 'do my own thing' yet don't know how. I'd like the 'thing' to be entrepreneurial along the lines of: this was hard to do before and now it's easy vs this is brand new/revolutionary.

If you're going to be a solo developer-entrepreneur, assume that you're going to spend 1/3rd of your time coding, 1/3rd of your time finding customers, and 1/3rd of your time interacting with your customers. Also assume that you'll be too busy to write complicated / interesting / creative software.

What I suggest is that you instead focus on getting real good at choosing who you work with: This can either be who you partner with in a startup, who you work for in a small company, or who you choose as a client. Remember, "entrepreneurial" can mean working in young business unit in a larger company, or joining a company that's so small that you need to jump out of your developer role from time to time.

> Alternately how do you meet someone with a complimentary skill set that has similar goals?

What I do is, when I look for a job, I favor early stage startups where I can work directly with the founders. It often takes legwork to find these jobs, but my most recent one I found on the monthly "Who's Hiring" thread on Hacker News.

[sillycube]

I think you miss the time to think about the direction. But it is the most important task compare with others. Your time allocation only focuses on execution. If one is heading to a wrong direction, it just accelerates the failure.

[gwbas1c]

My time allocation is very general; the point is that a developer-entrepreneur will spend most of their time doing things other than coding.

(And I could argue that "finding customers" encompasses "the time to think about the direction". But I'm a shitty solo developer-entrepreneur, who's mostly trying to steer people like me in the right direction, which is to figure out how to find the right people to work with.)