The answer is to look for the next X that gets you passionate again - i.e. Y. This can be anything you choose - a new startup, get into software marketing, write a book, teach .... the world is your oyster.
Older results from HN Search (4-7 years back)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99426https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120380https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5709455Interested in what people think in 2015[edited - formatting]
Quite liked the video though.
I personally do not believe that a funded company can compete with you on the features and domain expertise that you have built over the last 5 years. Where they could beat you is in spending money to get to the market first. The fact that there was funding means that someone believes that the idea is large enough to risk millions and there may be a first to market advantage.
(I know you were here first 5 years back, but it is possible that you have not reached out to your entire market yet)
Are there any start-ups that specialize in helping other start-ups with their marketing needs? Maybe a start-up running based on a Marketing as a Service (MaaS) model?
I believe one of the biggest disadvantages that you are not seeing with respect to the location is the distance from the market. Startups are more successful in the Valley compared to anywhere else, because the early adopters are in the valley too. These early adopters/customers allow a startup to know what to build, know when to pivot and know when to scale. Facebook was created in Harvard. Sure, it could have been created anywhere in the world, but looking back, being in one of the most prestigious schools in the world made a huge difference in its success.
So, unless you are building something for a set of people that you will find locally, you should look at moving closer to where other startups in your domain have been successful.
Once you become passionate about a new project, force yourself "Not To Start Development" on it for one entire month. In this one month, you will dedicate yourself to doing marketing research for the project - checking competitors, contacting potential customers, figuring out how to acquire customers (and how costly customer acquisition will be). If at the end of one month, you still find yourself passionate about the idea and find it feasible with respect to the market research done, by all means, jump in with both feet.
Why do this? I am a hacker at heart and I love to get my hands dirty building things. This makes me invest time in projects that have no future and should not be worked on. Forcing myself not to work on any idea I get for a month, ensure that I give my time to only worthy projects.
I understand that you created this to solve your own pain point and I commend you for taking the correct first step. However, I am unable to figure out what your software does that I cannot do with MailChimp. I may have missed something on your site, but it seems that the USP of your software is on email personalization through merge tags. This is not a unique feature or a feature re-done in a different way.
Few issues I see
1. You send email using the customers SMTP connection. Email service providers like Sendgrid, Mailchimp, Mailgun use their expertise to ensure that the emails they sent do not end up in junk mail. This is the single most important reason to use them as opposed to your own SMTP server.
2. Your pricing for sending emails is a lot higher than any of the above mentioned providers. Sending emails is a commodity. So, I'm not saying that you should be competing with these providers. However, if you price higher for the same service, you have to target a specific niche where you can add value. Like nickler mentions, integrating with merchants to automate followups.