My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

This is a really informative and inspiring article.

It has been 6 months (not 6 years) since I quit my full-time job as a Rust developer to start my own business.

As time goes by, I can feel the pressure of mortgage and car loans, and I can also feel the care and pressure of my family.

My original plan was to make a new IDE for Glicol (https://glicol.org), and to develop relevant hardware with firmware written in rust for school education.

I sent some cold emails to VCs, but most of them got no reply.

I also sent an email to the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, offering to perform for children for free, but they didn’t reply for two months. I shamelessly sent it again, and someone finally replied with a rejection.

Only one VC talked to me and thought that I should convince and validate a partner first, and he suggested that I go to an incubator.

Very good advice.

Later I learned that even Norwegian education startups skipped Norway and focused directly on the US market.

People from the incubator also told me that it is impossible for Norwegian schools to accept new things independently.

This is very enlightening to me because most of Glicol's visitors are indeed from the US. And it took me so long to discover this fact.

But if I don’t start, I’ll never get past those six months.

Wow. I am in similar situation. I quit job after having a baby and when workplace discriminated against me. I decided not to fight and rather start something of my own.

Now, I see no traction after building an MVP. We are in EduTech and eCommerce space. It is so hard to get any response from decision makers.

People would rather pay big corporations millions than talk to a regular person who is offering $200 software.

I don't know what to do.