So true. By the time I graduated in 2012, it was already too late. My first commercial side project failed. There was just too much competition and they got too much funding (I had 0 funding). I already felt that most opportunities for bootstrapping had dried up at that point and so, as a last resort, I decided to try the open source model and had some success in the sense that my open source project got a lot of traction initially.

Unfortunately growth slowed and there just weren't enough users to monetize. Felt like the door got slammed shut right in my face.

Timing and luck is everything.