There are a lot of start up hubs in big cities, I recently started working with some of the people involved in creating these in Ohio and they are becoming my primary resource for work.
Instead of considering projects as clients, I look for collaboration efforts where there is a path to equity. Regardless it almost always begins as some sort of contract for an initial trial collaboration.
A friend of mine invited me to help him start a non profit to apply natural language processing to detect violent rhetoric and bullying.
This was while I was working as a utility programmer and going to grad school.
While it never panned out for a number of reasons, it did get me introduced to the world of prototyping and I never looked back.
There have certainly been times of instability and there is no one there to lend a hand most times which can be intimidating.
One thing I try to do to get past the anxiety is make a new personal project when things get rough. So far it's worked out that those projects often lead to new opportunities and skills.
Being able to write the device, server and web client myself allows me to build concepts rapidly.
