How do I best get this business off the ground?
Long story short, I've spent the past year burning myself out next to my day job building a SaaS application focused on providing a specific type of IT security using a concept that has seemingly no competition yet. The MVP is essentially ready, very reliable with close to zero technical debt and has been refactored multiple times to prevent bigger issues as it scales. So far so good.
I've talked to other experts in the field and have received positive feedback in terms of value proposition and use-cases ranging from mom and pop shops to mid size, all the way to larger enterprises with big attack surfaces. I've designed very attractive pricing plans that make the service essentially a no-brainer for any size of entity, yet because of the laughably low cost of operation the gross profit margins on each subscription are sky high.
However being a SWE and not a businessman I'm kinda stuck on how to actually get it off the ground now. I was looking into angel investing but I do not have the capital necessary to start a LLC-equivalent which, I believe, is probably necessary for any angel investor to consider since they wish to receive equity in return.
My first thought would be to start it as a sole proprietorship, try to generate revenue and with this revenue eventually raise enough capital to modify the business structure to allow for equity shares. But I fear that the growth without real advertisement and marketing would be rather slow and eventually someone with actual resources would come and frontrun me.
Any advice would be highly appreciated! I'm not looking for any kind of big amount of funding - very small pre-seeding, if anything, as I assume organic growth would be quite self-sustaining after the initial kickoff. Is convertible debt a solution here?