Another data point on the lightyears-wide gap between people who do things and the whiteboard-centric, "top schools required" tech world.

Speaking as another bootstrap engineer, I eventually had to make a turn into marketing and sales. Compared with engineering organizations, those are far more pragmatic about their hires, especially for candidates with proven abilities to communicate well. It is sad to step away from being a maker, but it does pay the bills and coworkers are at least decent people.