A common remark from VCs, e.g., John Doerr at KPCB (e.g., quoted at AVC.com) is that "Ideas are easy and plentiful. Execution is hard and everything."
Well, bad ideas are easy and plentiful, and then execution is hard and everything.
But good ideas are hard, and then execution is routine.
By an "idea" Doerr meant just some short, off-hand statement, say, at a party or over the family Sunday dinner table, some summary might tell a neighbor over a back fence.
A good idea, however, may come with a stack of solid background research on the market, the problem to be solved, and a really good solution, say, the first good or a much better solution, with good barriers to entry, etc.
Here's an approach: Pick a problem that so far is solved at best poorly but where the first good solution will be close to a must have for enough people and revenue per person to make a successful business.
Then find a good solution. The solution might have secret sauce which was needed to solve the problem (why the problem wasn't solved 10 years ago) and that can also be a big barrier to entry.
It would help a lot to exploit current, comparatively dirt cheap, computing. If you write all your own code, then likely you don't need co-founders.
Venture capital won't much help because by the time you have enough for the VCs to write you a check, you will already have enough in traction that you can monetize to have enough revenue that you no longer need, want, or will accept their check, BoD, term sheet, vesting of what you already own 100% of, etc.
The checkbooks of the VCs were important when a Web site startup needed to spend big bucks with Sun Micro Systems, Oracle, Cisco, etc., but those days are over. Now the prices for such things are WAY down and the checkbooks of the VCs much less important.