Turns out, for instance, Halcyon Molecular was similar, it went bust losing tons of money but it let me get a decent wage after all the employment discrimination I suffered for standing up to torture (false imprisonment, so very similar, had a gap in my resume I couldn't explain because I didn't realize there was an April in 2009, it just hurt to think about that moment in my life). That $20-an-hour job allowed me to create abnormal speedups for many algorithms, leading to https://fgemm.com, which I'm working on now.
It was my second chance. And it created the tech it was meant to, just not the way the investors expected.
EDIT: can't reply to selimthegrim except here, at the limit of posts. I will get it working. I know it's not up yet, it's coming soon. Currently ironing out the algorithms instead.