It's very difficult to compete with other currencies. If no investors shows up this project is dead.
You should be bothered about this.
Not about that:
"there is more likely they will bail on you if there is no financial gain"

You create problem: "How to get witnesses? How to convince them they will benefit from byteball?"
You understand that this is one more problem that you create?

Instead of focusing on getting investors and compete with other cryptocurrencies you prefer to focus on solving problems that you create.