If you want to work on your startup idea, the bar for starting a company should always be very high.  VCs have a diversified portfolio and most of their investments die; you don’t have a diverse portfolio and so you’re taking far more risk than the VCs. 

Some ideas to improve your search process: 

• Review the slide deck and webinar below on “Identifying Market White Space.”
• Join a specialized community for founders in your vertical. Many generalist online communitieshave verticals focused on entrepreneurship, e.g., LunchClub or Meetup. See How to find the right online communities.
• Talk with VCs in your space. Many VCs keep a list of ideas they think have high potential, e.g., see our list of startup ideas we want to fund. 
• Engage with a VC which has a formal program to support individuals who have not yet founded a company, but likely will in the future. See our list of Completely Free Tech Accelerators: No equity, no cash cost.
• Join a “Talent Investor”. Antler, Entrepreneur First, and Visible Hands pay people a small stipend to iterate on and develop a fundable startup idea, and invest in the most promising ones. 
• Pay a small fee to a neutral company like OnDeck or TackleBox to help you refine and validate your startup idea. 
• Partner with a venture studio or impact foundry. See Max Pog’s research.
• Consider partnering with a software development shop.  To get yourself off the ground, consider working with some of the software development shops which are willing to take equity as payment. See Should you co-found your company with a software development shop?

Whatever path you pursue, even if it’s raising VC, it’s critical you fill out your Linkedin profile in detail. If you worked as a product manager at Google, you don’t need details; the job is widely understood. But as CEO of a startup, it’s hard for outsiders to evaluate what you actually did. It doesn’t matter if your startup sold for billions; most people won’t know what it did.