Comment by Uehreka

A few things stick out to me here:

- A lot of startups are already writing boring business software, you need a more specific vision. Whenever I meet startup people, they’re always super hardcore about their extremely niche market. Like, they’ll be super passionate about the problem of “tracking leads in life insurance sales” or their service that will “help custom denture companies ensure HIPAA compliance”. To get a vision like that, you need to research a market. Lots of other people are also researching markets, so it will help if you start researching a market area where you have some expertise already.

- At the end of the day, you have 2 options for funding (VC is not an option since you don’t want to build a unicorn). Option 1: Take out a loan. This will only work if you have enough collateral, and you should only do it if you feel very confident betting your literal house on your business idea. Option 2: Save up some money you can live off of, convince a designer and another dev to do the same. Quit your jobs, and form a company that you all own a part of. Work without paying yourselves until either customers start paying you or you run out of rent money and have to go back to working for someone else again. Option 2 feels more in line with what you seem to want here. Oh also talk to an actual accountant before doing any of this.

- Last thing I’ll say is that going the “boring” route is neither a guarantee of success or necessary for success. It is, however, a guarantee that the work will be boring. This is fine, and we do need a lot of people doing boring work to make the world go ‘round. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that trading away “interestingness” will get you money or success.