I am 2.5y into a bootstrap business (proxy alternative to burp suite). We are not nearly as successful as obsidian, but we managed to hit 30k$ ARR.
Honestly if I didnt have a contract on the side with high pay and low hours I would not be able to do it. Even with that if I compare what I would make as a full time dev I am not sure I will ever break even.
I used to judge/lament VC backed software, now I understand. Wish there was a third way, but it doesn't really exist. There could be with gov subsidies, Canada gives a looooooooot of money to business just not small ones (sucks to be poor). I also learned to not care about: people that are not paying customers / people that sh*t on you for not being OSS.
My company is incoporated in the EU. I tried getting a small subsidy of about 50k Euros through the Music Aire program [1].
I worked for a couple of weeks on the application and couldn't even get through the first round of evaluation. From the scores I received, my honest impression is the evaluators didn't have a clue or were too busy to pay attention or simply were told to focus on certain types of projects that would look good politically.
It was a long shot but it was quite disheartening to see a project that fit exactly the premise of the fund being discarded.
For anyone reading this experience and trying to take a broader lesson: don’t. Each subsidy/grant is run by a different board for different reasons and there are many who change (at least a couple) evaluators each year so that can change acceptances also. It’s kind of a pain, but applying for funding is like applying for a job: your best bet is to first understand what the current decision-makers are actually looking for (not just what they say they are).
To OP: Sorry it played out that way. I would have been disheartened too in your situation.
> your best bet is to first understand what the current decision-makers are actually looking for (not just what they say they are)
Difficult to say.
Someone close to me has been dealing with grant projects and evaluators in the EU for years now. They think the most probable reason is simply that the evaluators are bureaucrats unfit to evaluate the projects. Lots of money goes to useless projects and the follow-up is very shallow.
After I submitted my project, MusicAire opened a call for external evaluators which does support this theory.
Honestly if I didnt have a contract on the side with high pay and low hours I would not be able to do it. Even with that if I compare what I would make as a full time dev I am not sure I will ever break even.
I used to judge/lament VC backed software, now I understand. Wish there was a third way, but it doesn't really exist. There could be with gov subsidies, Canada gives a looooooooot of money to business just not small ones (sucks to be poor). I also learned to not care about: people that are not paying customers / people that sh*t on you for not being OSS.