Big companies spend a lot of money and attention on recruiting developers not as a way to actually help the devs, but as a way to justify investment in their platform. Dev'ing for a new platform is fraught with risk and slim chance of real reward in the short term for indies.

If you're an independent developer, you shouldn't expect any market or return on your efforts for YEARS. You shouldn't expect VCs to value a good idea. You shouldn't expect the market to discover your work. You should expect that if you have a good idea, other people have it too.

Ideas are common. Execution is everything. And not just technical accomplishment. Branding, Marketing, Timing, Pricing, Distribution, Accounting, Selling. Are all part of it. There's no field of dreams (if you build it they might not come).

Beware of survivorship bias. You will see big winners. There will be a few (and good for them!). Your odds of achieving that success are SLIM. I won't rule it out, but honestly, it's hard.

The window for 'early adopter' cred is about 6 months after the hardware is available. If you can be 'the first cool demo', you have a shot at getting noticed and taken in by the industry, after that, it's a dog fight.

If you go 'all in' on a platform that's new and you have bills to pay that can't be paid by existing income or assets you have before you start, you don't have enough money to chase that dream. You will run out, or won't be able to scale or will ship then die.

Developing a piece of software is about 50% of the cost of bringing that software to market. This is anecdotal on my experience running a small software company. If you spend $1 million on development, you should plan at least another million for marketing and sales and admin.

Taxes.Will.*F*.You.Up.

Get an accountant. Plan up front for taxes and know what you can expense and what you can't. Your living room can't be deducted as an HQ in most cases.

Big companies are not your 'friends'. The people there might like you, they may be nice to you, they may even give you swag. The company itself does not care about you nor should they. Your relationships are temporary and based solely on the value you deliver at the moment.

This means, you will get dropped like a hot rock if you do not present the most value to a devrel team if they have better options. Their time and resources are limited. It may pain them but they owe you nothing and you have no leverage. When the going gets tough, they're gone.

Side note: You get money if you don't need money. When looking for investment, spend money.

If you act poor and struggling, no one will give you resources. Wear good clothes, wash your car, clean up your office, stay at a hotel (or at least a nice AirBnB) and pay for the beers.

I've seen so many friends have great ideas pursued passionately and well fall into ALL of the above traps (and more).

All this aside, you can't win if you don't play. If it's your dream to slay the dragon, go for it, just know that the dragon lays on the bones of the fallen. :)