Ask HN: Which technology will me reach independence?

I've been doing unix server-side programming in the Valley for about 10 years now. I'm currently coding mostly in python but I've used most of the well-known languages (excluding Microsoft's creations). In the mid 90s I ran my own business for a year - not software related. It was stressful scary and fun.

I want to start my own business. Not a startup with a one in a million chance of taking over the world, but a solid company making great products (or services) with a good chance of achieving 5 million in revenue. I am capable of working insanely hard (and loving it) when connected to a customer that actually cares about the product. Which has rarely been the case in the last ten years.

What technical skills will help me reach this goal? Becoming a better and better server-side programmer seems pointless, since I already have the back-end toolset for any startup I can envision. To reach users, I need a good GUI. And all my ventures into GUI learning have fizzled out.

To learn a major new technology I need total committment. I need to really believe that this is the path forward, or I will end up blowing it off. Should I learn Android or Iphone or modern web development? I've built web sites, of course, but I have not kept up with the modern javascript-based web. Which actually kind of disgusts me because it tends to be slow and annoying. I've dabbled in Android and didn't like it much (don't like Java) - I hear Iphone is much nicer to develop for, but of course it has restrictive policies and a declining market share.

Or maybe I should bite the bullet and learn C#/.NET. I have managed to stay away from Microsoft stuff almost completely - I strongly dislike it - but it still seems to be the norm for niche business apps to be Windows only. It can at least provide a nice performant native-looking app to the vast majority of business users.

It has dawned on me that an expert Windows programmer is better poised for independence than an expert Unix programmer, because he can deliver finished solutions to ordinary small businesses.

Or even MacOS Cocoa programming.

Or I could stick with what I'm good at and develop a prototype GUI in plain jane HTML, with some RPC to a controller layer; then hire outside talent to write the web 2.0 or Iphone GUI. One problem here is finding trustworthy talent; after 10 years in the industry I am pretty suspicious of programmers' abilities.

I should also mention that any half-baked cross-platform GUI system is not going to appeal to me. I've wasted a lot of time on these things, only to hit dead ends. If I'm going to produce native apps, I want them to look at least as good as the competition. And I want a huge dev community so I am not the first one running into a certain issue.

So which is the best step towards independence?