"None of this shit is easy, and no one is going to handhold you through the process."

Thanks for giving the straight up answer on this.

We all love to read about the people doing it but the reality is that the time and effort that is really involved is just tremendous. I am reminded of the story of a person asking a famous piano player that they would really like to play like them. The answer that was given to the person was - "No you don't. You don't want to be sitting in front of a piano for 4 hours every day for years, practicing and practicing. You say you want to play like me but you can't/won't put in the time to get to my level of skill."

We all like to read about starting a company but at the end of the day, no one but you is going to get you out of that couch. Especially this notion of "I don't have a an idea". There's a simple answer to that. Make that your intention, make it your job to get an idea.

I love James Altucher's daily practice : http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/02/how-to-be-the-luckiest-...

Just spend time every morning coming up with ideas. Heck there's going to be hundreds of shitty ideas coming out but at some point there might be something akin to nugget of gold in there. Even with that nugget, not much will come of it, if its not cleaned, processed and made something of it. It's the same with the idea, go ahead and apply Steve Blank's methodology on it. Maybe in a span of one or two years, you went through a handful of junky ideas that didn't turn into anything (and hopefully not much was lost - especially if you followed Steve's approach) but perhaps you might have enough of a business to work for yourself and have a couple of employees.

Now, does this mean that if you follow this approach, you will succeed? Who knows. That's the beauty of it, the journey is the fun part. If you've done it right, you might succeed gloriously (but please, don't think you can be the next Dropbox, Groupon, etc. bringing home 200-500K net income from your business for yourself is a very comfortable lifestyle). Just don't fail gloriously. Baby steps, until you know that the big step you want to take (such as quitting your full time gig) will have a good outcome.