I used to bring bread to my team, but now I'm driving the team broke. These are married adults.
But this is unexpected and impactful encouragement. Thank you. The pressure to save the day is overwhelming, but this is helping me get clarity and motivation for the mission.
Thanks. I think this is what I would advise anyone else. My judgment is surely clouded by fear. My worry is having a job will take away my time for hacking on novel stuff. But perhaps I should consider that the cost of capital.
I realize I'm a diva about VC. I definitely prefer capital upfront and a mission to shoot for the moon, but I have to admit that I've only demonstrated success when bootstrapping and running customer dev from the start.
Further thoughts on your point, I seem to have an expectation that I deserve free money to run a science experiment with low chance of big result, with little proof. This isn't how VC works in practice, so if I want funding, I should have built the case for it, or start now.
If it was SaaS, I'd advise bootstrapping product dev with consulting, but I don't see a path to do that with a robotics SDK. The only bootstrapping strategy I can think of is like robotics-for-coders courseware. Not a bad strategy, but that won't keep the lights on.