[mikejarema]

I think there is a middle step here that Daniel could tackle.

Building small- to medium scope tools for himself that can be dressed up with affiliate links to serve as lead gen for a 3rd party site/service.

The trifecta of building something he would use, potentially making some profit, and building his portfolio at the same time is very compelling.

Targeting the web, building on open source, and deploying to a free(mium) platform (eg. Heroku, free tier of AWS) addresses some of the cost concerns.

The final piece is effective marketing. Get the tool in front of like-minded users (HN & consistent tweeting/blogging) to build up your user base over time. Refine the tool as needed.

Of course the devil is in the details, but given what I'm seeing about Daniel's case this is the advice I would give.