Survivor bias...
People all the time even have spouses and families and manage to pull off respectable M&A events.
If someone doesn't try, they have to live with themselves and their regret for not answering the question of "could I have built something other people think is great?"
It's whether a person has the stuffing to schlep hardcore and drag themselves over the finish line.
Life's strategy is pure and simple:
Pick your battles carefully, and never give up.
Anyone whom has the courage and the inclination can and should experiment often to see if they can hit on something viable. Because unlike the lottery, it's possible to make a few bucks with passive revenue apps without much effort.
I am not saying your proposal isn't a good strategy. There just isn't a guarantee for success. Even your app claim sounds less convincing if you look at the actual average revenue for apps.
Ad supported free OTOH infinite running cool but a little crappy games are great for selling more conversions to better paid apps (CandyCrush). They're also more profitable on Android since users expect mode of "something for nothing" as opposed to the Apple tax. Often with games and other non-one-time-useful and non-business-critical apps, in-app purchase of ad removal, virtual currency buy/offers is the way to go rather than paid. But it depends on the quality expectations of the app too.
Generally, If someone believes they can't, even if they may have the aptitude, they'll never know. That is the greatest regret and waste of talent imaginable. One also has to be clear and honest about one's/others' capabilities/needs in order to not get stuck in wandering in wantrepreneur land.
Finally, startup people are most similar to special forces badasses... able to get sh*t done, figure it out and eventually win.
Honestly, I'm a junior wantrepreneur apprentice too until getting to balancesheet positive at least into the six-seven figure range.
Your life's strategy is simply one of many, and most who follow it fail anyway.
My wealth is pretty much the value of my home. Any risk to losing that is fairly serious. No, my family won't starve, but losing years of equity/value and being forced to move to a shittier part of town and shittier school system, more crime, etc is a demotivator. This is why you see so many startups being kids directly from college. They have much less to lose and they're still young and energetic and haven't been beaten down by the 9-5 grind yet.
>Pick your battles carefully, and never give up.
Agreed, but now I do smaller and less ambitious side-projects than a big dramatic "We quit our jobs and now work out of a garage" type startup stereotype. Its not nearly as sexy or potentially life changing as "I'm selling a small application that targets $boring_industry and solves $boring_problem, but may be a nice small passive income if things go perfectly."
I never said it was easy or that *chances are on your side, if this [...] and that [...]. If that was the case everyone would be building Apple-like companies from their garages but we have only one, Apple.