First of all, congratulations. That's a huge feat and you seem to have overcome a lot of hurdles to make it.

That being said, I find it a bit discouraging that small-team passion projects with even the best product-market fit and minimal marketing spend only reach this level of profitability after 5 years.

Like, I can work at a FAANG, coast, make no real contribution to society and collect a 400K/yr check. Or I could go all in on a cool idea and risk getting no customers. Option 2 sounds more fun, but it's still so much stress and uncertainty for little payoff.

Do others feel the same?