VLJ's are cute, yes. I'm slightly hopeful about small scale turboprops too. Yes, generally turbines don't scale down very well (well, applies to VLJ's to an extent as well), but if they only could make the capital costs of a turbine decent enough, the reliability, power/weight, and cheap and available Jet A-1 would still make such a thing attractive, I think.

There's a couple of companies working in this space:

Turbaero: https://turb.aero/ Turbotech: https://www.turbotech-aero.com/