Just to clear up some confusion, we are a for-profit. I wholeheartedly agree with the catch-22 nature of grants. We survived for quite awhile with a significant portion of our funding coming from them, and while they helped, the overhead that came with hitting their specific goals & reporting metrics ate way too much of our (paid) staff time. Grants we're just enough to survive, but pulled a lot of time away from developing in core-business areas. If done again, I would definitely be a proponent of running as a non-profit.
Absolutely agree with your take on grants though, I get why these stipulations exist.
A sidenote on staff vs volunteers: Volunteers are great, and heck I started out in the space as one (some 7 or so years ago), but pretty quickly we transitioned into paid roles for space critical ops.
While having paid positions was definitely one of the contributing factors into the high costs of the space, in my opinion its also the primary thing that allowed us to operate as smoothly as we did at times (not saying without a large number of hiccups).
It's easier to clearly define boundaries and expectations on individuals without souring relationships when there is compensation for someone's time.
Re: Angels: Yes, we included a hail-mary clause in that letter, and even had a couple parties (from the more philanthropic side) reach out, but to put it bluntly the hill is steep, even if we transitioned to non-profit.