The biggest issue we came across was not having a place to get support during development. In the end a couple of devs helped us (thank you @gerber and Rishi) and without them we would not have been able to create anything on HIVE.
Ever since then we have worked, as you say, in isolation and although we sometimes get contacted about being part of a marketing effort HIVE is just a technology we use but don't feel part of.
We did try to get DHF funding once and failed but that ended up being a good thing as it drove us to think about how we could make Rising Star self sustainable.
HIVE provides curation rewards and 15% on HBD savings. It is possible to use this to build financial resilience and although we are not there yet we are well on the way to using these to cover all our costs.
When you start a company you expect to lose money for the first few years and you have a business plan that factors this in. Developing on HIVE should be no different. Maybe the DHF fund should have two different flavours: funding core projects and providing loans to others where the repayment starts low but increases over time?
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