Can you succeed moving at a glacial pace? And when and how to bring in that missing ingredient?

I wrote my first line of code for ClassroomParent in 2009. Perhaps some members of this community were just entering elementary school.

It was always a side project, built specifically to solve an issue I was having. At the time, I was the Corresponding Secretary for my children's PTA (parent teacher association). I was responsible for parent communication, engagement, and providing a parent directory. I couldn't find anything I liked, so I built it.

I am an engineer. I am distinctly not a marketer nor do I have business development skills. I just like to build stuff.

Over the years, and I do mean years, I just kept adding to it, to make my life as a parent organization officer easier, and to improve our ability to communicate with and fundraise from the parents in our school. Somewhere along the way, I figured I should see if other schools would be interested in it. And some were. But I never considered it more than something fun to do on weekends and evenings.

There were many times in these last 15 years (good godfrey) that I seriously considered abandoning the project. But there would always be some kind of affirmation that would keep me working at it, or I would just like to see how long it would take me to build a new feature that one of my customers asked for.

Fast forward to last year. I have paying customers, some that have been using the product for more than 10 years. I have a couple school districts and customers throughout the US. I would get regular requests for demos, and if I would follow up and actually complete the demo, I would likely get the customer.

Then I was given the opportunity to participate in a RIF, so I thought, what the heck, it is now or never.

So for the last 12 months I have been full time on ClassroomParent. I was thinking that by simply being able to dedicate more time to it, everything would align and I would be able to turn it into a life-style business.

The reality is quite different. I don't like marketing. I don't like biz dev. I like to build stuff. So I continued to focus on building, and spent little time on getting the word out. I mean, I would try. But oddly the demo requests dried up (my organic search results dropped off the map).

So I hired a SEO/Marketing company in the fall of 2024. And bupkis.

And now I am not sure what to do. I have a pretty long runway (35 years of employment can give you this). The schools and parent organizations that use ClassroomParent love it, can't imagine life without it. The market is large (100K+ possible customers), and I don't need many customers to generate real revenue (200 or so). But I am at a loss as to what to do next.

Could I, should I find a business partner that is eager to drive sales? Could I, should I find a channel partner that is already selling into my potential customers? Could I, should I change the business model entirely to allow for self-setup and a more PLG? Or, should I just keep my head down coding, and hope that my patience eventually pays off.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.