I live in Cape Town, none of my alumni could put me in contact with any SV VC's, even in 24 days. He reinforced the idea of 'it's who you know in the v(V)alley'.

Due to the success of his application, the OP is applauded for his tenacity, his unwillingness to give up. If he had failed though, he would've seemed a little more like the annoying guy who just doesn't get the message. His post, and process isn't particularly helpful to most others.

But I appreciate the insight given by YC, or those connected with the process. My take-away (play intended) from the post and comments is: 1.) If you believe in your product, and you feel it's commercially viable, build it before you even start asking for money, and 2.) Use your product as the pitch. Yeah, everyone demos their product during a sales call, but using it directly on the client even before an introduction seems like a nice differentiator. Not very easy in the Enterprise, or if your clients are anonymous, but a targeted start might work - warrants further thought.

Anyway, good luck to the OP!

However, since it's been bought out by Google, he's lost all the passion for the application. It's just going to get swallowed up by the shark, and no-one really cares. So, what is the point of releasing an awesome version for it?

Obviously, he's got plenty of options at this time. But, the motivation, the passion, the brand recognition, the love, it's all disappeared. Take the magic out of the cauldron and you're just left with boiled, icky bits.

I don't know enough about the application, or the platform, etc, but open-source it, and make it a client that can connect to multiple platforms. Sounds good?

That place really does look awesome. And space for hardware hacking too, great. I live in an apartment nowadays and really miss going out to the 'barn' and working with power tools until 3AM, seriously.

Looks pretty busy too...

Good luck.

I've recently been aquired by a larger company who develops a similar product, same windows stack but without the SharePoint flavour. They do an inordinate amount of support. But they do it to themselves - they give their clients the means to beat them up about support: multiple support channels, nd aaggressive SLA's. They have a team of 12 developers and they're always under pressure to maintain their support processes.

Sounds like you need some strategic architecting input: which products are important; what functionality can (needs to) be reeingineered; what's profitable and what isn't; what is a realistic support process, timeframe, etc? Then once you've been through all this, you realise how important it is to design simple, reliable products.

22 years ago I went through a fairly strange time: I was depressed, disconnected, and feeling deeply alone. It culminated in a very violent suicide attempt. Despite all my plans and precautions I was found still alive and hospitalised. Being young and antisocial I never went back to therapy and for a few months afterwards I kept going back to the idea of trying it again.

The turning point for me was realising that suicide was in fact an option. Admittedly a pretty drastic option, but one nonetheless. Neither was it 'the easy way out', or 'for the weak'. Destroying one's own life isn't a spur of the moment decision, similar to deciding which tart one should have for tea, etc. Driven by desperation, or severe pain, it is a momentous decision and the consequences are irreversible - no one who really makes the decision does so lightly.

The understanding that it was an option, gave me a feeling of control. Since it was an option and one that I could take at any time, I had some level of control over my situation. If that was an option, then perhaps there were other options. I decided to explore other options. I haven't been there in 18 years but I still know what it feels like.

We are adults. At your worst times, don't be intimidated by ignorant misconceptions about suicide. It is your mind, you have the right to explore it, and you have the right to make whatever decision you feel is correct for you. Just remember that if there is one way of resolving an issue there may just be another way, one that is less violent, less irreversible; one that may just provide further options, one that may eventually lead to happiness, however remote that may appear at the moment.

At a time (a few years ago) when I really didn't want to go on, this was one of the things that prevented me from attempting suicide again: The possibility of surviving it again, knowing how negatively that would impact my life. My life was hard enough at the time without inflicting additional suffering on myself and also getting labeled "crazy" or something (plus potentially being saddled with additional medical bills, etc). A lot of people living with the kind of chronic pain and suffering (due to a health issue) that I was living with do think about killing themselves. "Bars do not a prison make". A body that tortures you ever single minute of every day is a pretty bleak prison to live with.

But I also was actively working on resolving the underlying problem that made me wish I were dead. I think that is a critical detail missing from a lot of the encouragement offered when this topic comes up. In fact, spending a year at death's door was very empowering for me in that regard because it freed me up from fear of doing something socially unacceptable. I never know how to properly express this, but I lived and began getting well because I stopped trying to dutifully keep myself alive and, instead, my one and only goal became to hurt less. I was rather annoyed when I realized that my efforts to hurt less were actually killing the infections the doctors didn't know how to kill because I realized it meant I faced a long, very hard recovery. I would have welcomed death 10 or 11 years ago because I was in constant excruciating pain and couldn't sleep and every minute of the day was torment. So in some sense I came to a point where my attitude was "fuck societal expectation -- what do I want?" Given what a people-pleasing doormat I tend towards, this had a very positive impact on my life.

What I am trying to convey is: If you are suicidal, if your problems are so bad that death is something you would consider, that fact can be used to say "well, why not also consider this long list of other stuff (ie possible solutions/options) I wouldn't normally consider because it's socially unacceptable/my mom wouldn't approve/whatever?" When I stopped being at death's door, I had to work at keeping alive that mental space for saying "fuck societal opinion -- what do I want?" because my innate wiring makes societal opinion way the hell too important to me. I made a conscious choice to find some way to keep that standard alive for myself, to say "hell, what's the worst that could happen? Oh, someone might disapprove? And that fucking matters why?"

Anyway, I hope that makes some small smidgeon of sense to someone. I find it a very difficult concept to express.

Mostly we fear ourselves, what we are, what we aren't, etc. Whether the dialogue is accurate or not, well, that's up to us individually, and so is what we do with it.

Situations and experiences can hold a mirror up to us - so to speak - wherein we're forced to confront these fears of ourselves. It's interesting that the Steve persona did that to you. I doubt it was intentional on his part, just part of who he was, a part of the legacy he had created and you.