During this month, I sought out, and spoke with potential investors for my x-ray project. At the time I figured, "oh boy, this will be easy! We're doing real science, not building dog walking apps".

Most of these meetings went something like this;

• We'd be happy to meet with you!"
• --- We meet, and explain the project)
• "Sounds great! How many customers or users do you have?"
• --- I say zero, and explain it will take a few years to develop a product like this.
• "Oh. Well, do you have a prototype"
• --- I explain, no, but I have schematics and have built things like this in the past.
• "That's exciting. Please keep us informed"

It took some time to realize that "please keep us informed" is actually a "no".

After many more meetings like this, I started to get the impression that no one really cares if you have an invention.

Further,

People love to say things that make you feel good, but mislead you, and often cause more harm than if they had just been direct.

Further still,

People are very quick to make short term decisions, and very bad at understanding benefit in long-term thinking.

And further still,

When you're 20, it's hard to be taken seriously.

I had teammates abandon me at this point, their faith lost in my ability to lead this project.

Suffice it to say, at the end of august I wasn't in the best of spirits.