As someone make a lot of stainless kitchen knives, I think you'll probably do better. The ultimate performance of carbon steel in the kitchen is better. Personally, I can't stand the thought of one of my knives turning into a rusty piece of junk, or even just a less attractive piece, because of someone's lapse of attention or a mother-in-law putting it in the dishwasher once. Plus the idea of spending hours and hours hand sanding to a lovely finish, just to turn around and patina it is not appealing to me. I know for sure that my personal knives would not be looking too hot right now if they weren't stainless. That's why I chose the stainless route, but there are a bunch of good reasons to go carbon.
1. It's trendy. Don't read this as pejorative, there are many who choose carbon steel because they really need/want the best possible performance. But, I've observed a definite push towards nostalgic, hard-core-ish kind of mentality. The reddit/hipster/20-something generation definitely appreciates high-end/hand made stuff, which is good for all of us. The word is out there that carbon steel is what the cool kids use in the kitchen, which fits in with that whole trend. So there are some who would probably really be better served by stainless since they aren't really putting it through super hard use, but they want the carbon because they like the idea of having the best performance.
2. It's easier. Pre-HT I think AEB-L and S35VN are negligibly different to grind than the average carbon steel. Some are definitely tougher to grind, but I don't personally think that makes a huge difference. However, AEB-L is the only one I've tried thus far that isn't a borderline nightmare to grind/finish after HT. Grind your carbon steel after HT and you get a shower of sparks, grind your stainless after HT and you get a shower of what used to be your grinding belt*. Finish sanding didn't used to take me 1/2 of the total build time, now it does. The average buyer has no idea about this, so it's hard to explain why your S35VN knife costs twice as much as a similar looking 1084 knife. The end result is that you have to charge less for your time until people are willing to pay a lot for your knives.
3. It's cheaper. The steel cost, if you go to the right sources, is not necessarily a big deal in terms of total investment in a knife, until you get into the super-duper-steels like S90V and up, or damascus. Using admiral, I can do a big S35VN chef's for about $20 in steel. However, it is more than I'd be paying for carbon steel, and it slowly adds up. More importantly, my abrasive consumption went though the roof upon switching to mostly stainless, I have to buy all ceramic belts (a good idea anyway, but now a requirement), and all my knives now require cryo which means going to Peter's. More $.
Like you, my first 15 knives or so were all carbon steel, or carbon damascus. I went to stainless when I got into cutlery because it made the most sense in my mind. They are both totally valid markets with slightly different focuses (foci?). But going the carbon steel route you can make more knives, faster, and sell them for less. Like you said, some people like myself don't want to deal with the risk of rust, which is why the stainless market exists. I want my knife to look as close to new as possible when it gets handed down, resold, etc. You just have to decide which one to do, or do both.
* I haven't tried every steel in the book, and there may very well be exceptions on both sides to these generalizations. My steels-used list thus far is O1, 1095, 5160, 52100, D2, AEB-L, 440C, S30V, S35VN, and S110V.
I have a little blurb on my site explaining my philosophy on the matter. At some point, probably sooner rather than later, I'm going to make a couple in hitachi blue for myself and see how the perform/look after some time in my kitchen. I'll probably get hooked and start doing some of both.
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