In your shoes I would either:

- Raise VC: freemium and B2C apps are almost impossible to bootstrap without funding

- Quit and do something else: If you can’t raise real money for it your chances of success are really low (sorry, just being honest)

This is why so many indie makers and bootstrappers go B2B - it’s just easier to make the math work with getting dozens or hundreds of customers to make a really solid business.

I’ve 100% been in your shoes but gotta say, if you don’t have customers you don’t have a business, you have a hobby.

I would stop all development work on the product and sign up 10 customers. See what that process is like, see if you like it, hear their objections. You’ll find a way to take sales calls during the work day (I used to from my car at lunchtime).

If you get 10 paying customers, why not 100, why not 1,000.

Can you automate the signup process or do a self-service demo somehow? I’ve done pre-recorded videos en lieu of sales calls for a time and it worked ok.

Generally though, I would NOT just quit your job if you have zero paying customers. Ease into it. Sounds like you’ve been burning the candle at both ends for a while, and I have mad respect for that, but probably best to keep doing it a bit longer til you have some sense for what revenue of the business could really look like. Especially if you have kids and a family to support.

While I don’t believe there is one universal “best” way to acquire customers, some of it will come down to the type of business. What is your Customer Lifetime Value?

All of these CAN work:

• Content marketing: blogging, YouTube, podcasting
• SEO
• Paid acquisition: Adwords, Meta ads, etc.
• Conferences
• Referrals and affiliates
• Partnerships and Integrations (especially for software)
• M&A - just buy your competitors

Some of these will be cost prohibitive if you have a lower priced product, or a lower LTV, so you’ll want to filter the list with that in mind.

But generally I’ve found that most any company can grow in almost any customer acquisition channel, the challenge is sticking with ONE of them long enough to make it work. We as founders love the shiny object and want to go try something new when things get hard…but the successful companies all know that sticking with something until it works is the real key.

In my experience raising $1+M in funding, its all about relationships. VCs and Angel investors follow a heard mentality…you need a strong lead investor and then the rest will pile on quickly from there. Being in the bay area i’d attend as many meetups and tech/startup events as you can and just get to know people. This is likely NOT a one-to-many approach, but boots on the ground, hand-to-hand relationship building.

Don’t know how much you’re looking to raise, but looking at things like YT, TinySeed, etc. might be a good move.

I’m a solo, non-technical founder of a 7-figure ARR SaaS business, and I can tell you that knowing how to program is the least of your concerns. Learning how to do sales, marketing, operations, fundraising, etc. are all way more important than being able to code.

If you’re really standout at any of those you can either figure out a way to self-fund the business or you can raise a little bit of money from something like YC, TinySeed, other acccelerators to hire your first engineer.

Product is important, but distribution way moreso. There’s a huge graveyard of failed products that are technically excellent. Not a lot of companies who are great at distribution with crappy products.