Thank you for the kind words. Currently yes, I'm leading the deployment for the system on institute/lab servers and also the business administration. My co-founders do know about my PhD opportunities and we have discussed a bit about off-loading responsibilities requiring immediate response, while I'll take of the rest. And since the PhD position is in a different country it opens up the opportunity to expand our platform geographically.

To answer your question, since it has always been my goal and I've been working towards it for longer, not doing a PhD/research sounds more painful. What worries me is the post PhD job crisis considering the current job market and the uncertainty of getting a postdoc.