Our industry is a surprisingly small pond, at the top anyway. No one would invest in the Mill based on my formal bio "College dropout; never took a CS course in his life" :-)

Instead they invest based on our technology, most of which (and eventually all) we make publicly available. You may not be able to judge it, but any potential partner has people who can. One of the things that encouraged us in our long road is that the more senior and more skilled the reviewer, the more they loved the Mill. Quotes like "This thing is the screwiest thing I've ever seen, but it would work - and I could build it".