There's not a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to the middle-class consumer market, and that's just the way it is. The only companies that do well in this space spend vast amounts of money on marketing to convince the middle class to buy status symbols and convenience products that don't improve their lives materially. They just provide that little bit of dopamine hit immediately after the purchase period. It's very hard for an entrepreneur to "disrupt" the middle class.<p>In The Millionaire Next Door, the author makes the claim that some of the most successful business are started by middle-class people who actively seek to solve the problems of the upper-middle to upper class demographic. These are (typically) people so involved with their work that they will pay much more money than you or I consider reasonable if it means they get an extra hour on Sunday to spend with their family or business network. So if you do sprinkler maintenance, for example, your business will grow a lot quicker if you skip the suburbs and focus on the McMansions and $1+mil-per-door developments just off the interstate.<p>In software, I believe the closest equivalent is business-to-business, but of course this requires a significant amount of knowledge of the sector you're targeting and (as always) a good network.<p>"If it was easy, everyone would be doing it."
> One thing they all emphasise is that success often comes from finding a problem that you yourself would pay money to solve.<p>This is BS. Most businesses come from finding out what problems <i>other people</i> would pay to solve. Or finding a way to make a solution to a problem that people <i>already</i> pay to solve cheaper or easier. Asking yourself the question only works if you're lucky and have a common problem that many other potentially paying customers have. And if you're one of those people who doesn't like paying for things, odds are any problem you have is going to be one that disproportionately belongs to other people who don't like paying for things, and thus is not a good business opportunity.
I think what's being missed here is that time is money. So while you may not be willing to part with cash, if you're willing to invest time in solving problems then you're already exploring things you'd "pay to solve".
TANSTAAFL<p>Looks like you're after a 'perpetual Motion Machine' with no input and lots of output.<p>Good Luck with that.<p>You have to charge for your time. My first wife could never understand that. She went broke several times.