Reading your essay it feels like you were obsessed with the product's artefacts, the methodology, the tech stack, the hosting, the scalability, the suportabiliry..., far more than wth the solution and getting the first sale.

All of these are good qualities, but if you then do not have a product owner to push back and force you to deliver fast and cut every corner imaginable, you can indeed find yourself in endless development rewrites and optimisations.

I have seen quite a few startups up close in Belgium, and I'm fairly confident that you would be horrified by the code base and operations of the ones that are succeeding.

P.S. Smartschool seems to be triving in the Belgian school system.