I'm doing some consulting at the moment, it's a challenging gig, but doesn't fell fulfilling enough.
I'm actively trying to come up with an idea for my next venture, but can't seem to find anything I'm passionate about. I wonder if joining an established company would help with that problem.
Basically, if you want to come up with an idea, go find problems you think are injustices in the world and go off and learn as much as you can, both online and in the real world. Why do those problems exist? Is it a technical problem, social problem, etc? As you go for a root cause analysis, you'll naturally end up coming up with solutions.
2. Sometimes it's simply hard to get a high-level view of the tech industry and the markets that interplay. There are tons of cool startups. I recently wrote a blog post that you might like, where my company lists 75 of the most exciting startups, segmented by problem space: https://jobstart.com/guides/top-startup-picks-explore-the-ma...
Hope this all helps, and good luck!
If you are feeling unfulfilled, then maybe you should be looking at bigger, real problems. Of course, big problems are typically too big for a solo founder to tackle.
I cannot fathom your thinking about joining an established company being an answer. Generally, such companies stifle innovative thinking.
So you have to account for survival first. If you need to get a job, then get a job. You don't need to find a fulfilling passion until step 1 is taken care of.
Also, I think it's important to differentiate between work and passion. Most people never discover an alignment between what they do to earn money and what's most important to them. Instead, most people become passionate about something like their family and work is just something they do to support their passion. It's normal to not find a startup you're passionate about.
A pattern I've seen described, that might work in your case, is to ask your clients if they have any unsolved problems they would happily pay you money to solve. Use their responses as the basis of your search. Keep paying the bills, and in your "spare time" investigate these problems. If one of them grabs you, ask for payment up front, if you get it, then you've found alignment between a passion and work.
An alternative approach is to look for people who are a little bit ahead of you and going in the direction you want to go. People who have found an alignment between their passion and work, and who are a little ways into the journey. Shop among them for one that you want to join. Work on their passion and find out how it's going for them.
Another alternative is to dramatically alter the survival equation so that you can devote yourself to exploring potential passions without worrying about survival. Live super cheap; maybe move to Vietnam or something.
For context, I found an alignment between my passion and work. At least, I hope I did. One person's asked to pay for it already, I just have to get that part built. I never followed a pattern of trying to find a passion I could turn into an income, I just always chased down and tackled interesting challenges. A while ago realized that the solution I'd come up with had way too much potential to remain a hobby. Now I'm in a place where I'd rather fail at this new thing than succeed at my day job.
If that's the kind of feeling you're looking for then try to tackle problems that are standing in the way of things you believe should happen. I was trying to apply the principles of open source software projects to hardware projects and just couldn't personally accept that they weren't working. It started to infuriate me. I could picture all the great things that would come from open source hardware, but none of us could come up with a way to make the process work, so none of those great things could happen. It felt personal. I don't think you're going to find that kind of personal, emotional, passionate connection to run of the mill business problems.
Survival is not an issue, as a developer I can always find a remote gig to pay the bills.
Joining a startup which does something somewhat interesting/relevant to my passions is a good idea, unfortunately those are a few, but it's a good place to start I reckon.
As to moving to Vietnam option, I've lived a digital nomad lifestyle for the last couple of year, and it didn't work out very well, so I moved back to SF. I'm not sure how "exploring passions" would work living in a complete isolation in a place where you don't even speak the language.
> Do you still feel that way, or did the feeling change when it didn't work out?
"Survival is not an issue, as a developer I can always find a remote gig to pay the bills."
> That's a good position to be in. I've got several siblings and at this point all of us have migrated over to software engineering of some kind because it's so powerful and flexible.
"Joining a startup which does something somewhat interesting/relevant to my passions is a good idea, unfortunately those are a few, but it's a good place to start I reckon."
> Yeah, it seems like even if the startup itself isn't doing anything you're passionate about, at least you'll be surrounded by people who grok it.
What kind of stuff are you passionate about?
"I've lived a digital nomad lifestyle for the last couple of year, and it didn't work out very well, so I moved back to SF."
> Did it just not agree with you? I've been wondering whether or not I should try it.
"I'm not sure how "exploring passions" would work living in a complete isolation in a place where you don't even speak the language."
> From what I hear there are large expat communities. I've found that a lot of my exploration is limited by my own ability to learn and apply, rather than direct access to other people. I got on my current track because I was searching youtube for robot engineering. But other people are an important part of it. It seems like SV is probably the best place in the world to find like-minded people.
It's just that the throughput of in-person communication is much higher than that of digital. Here in SV you have access to some of the smartest people in the world, and having this opportunity to speak to them and exchange ideas is invaluable for me.