New Venture

I am thinking of starting a new venture but unsure how to go
about the whole process. Having worked more than a decade
for others it is time for me to do something different.

I have lot of experience in product development and software
development. How can I translate this into profits?

I have already taken the decision based on my friend's projections
about the business. The plan was to initially help him with his
projects. 2 months down the line, I realize that he has no more
projects! So much for projections..

Now having taken the leap, my challenge is to how do I do a
course correction. I have taken corporate trainings for sustaining
myself but it slowly becoming overwhelming. I need to delegate
some of the work to people who can do the nitty-gritty and myself
do some executive work so that I can have something in the pipeline.

The major issue for me is to how to look for prospects. I do not many
people who can give me software projects. The cold calls for some of
the people I knew did not produce anything tangible. There is my ex-colleague
from ABB days and he has promised me some breaks but it is going to
be a while before something materializes.

I am not sure about the strategy to follow to go about building the business.
I am taking a cautious approach so that it would be easy to bail out if
necessary. Some of the potential things that I could are as follows
(in no specific order)
1. Provide training
2. Write a book (already some material is available with me)
3. Develop a general purpose hardware.
4. Distribution of foreign company product
5. Execute turnkey projects (This is my real interest, but there does not seem to be
many opportunities; atleast I don't know of many)
6. Develop software components (like network stack, specialized drivers, middleware)
Again the problem would be later how to sell this.

Immediately I face the challenge of earning some money. I have taken up a
consultancy project. This would require me to travel to South Korea and will put
me off for 2-3 months. (The chicken and egg kind of startup situation).

While I decide on the best course of action, hope someone could give me some
lead as to how best to begin this journey.