After contacting many VCs and getting only meager responses, I concluded much the same things as in the OP.

The VC Web sites were deceptive: They claimed interest in new, advanced, powerful, for big markets, secret sauce, barriers to entry, high margins, etc.

Nope. Much as in the OP, the main thing they want is just current revenue, or at least proxies such as monthly unique users, significant and growing very rapidly.

So, I switched projects to one I can do as a sole, solo founder funded with just my checkbook.

Let's get a view of something VCs do not like but their Web sites implied they would like:

To the users, my project is just a Web site. The project is a new search engine for Internet content. The main business idea, drawing in part from some old work at Battelle, is that quite generally keywords are good for only about 1/3rd of content search. My project is for the other 2/3rds. Keys in the work are some new data and new ways to process that data. The new ways are from narrow, advanced pure math and some original applied math I derived (users will not be aware of anything mathematical) -- this use of math is the intellectual property, trade secret, secret sauce, technological advantage and barrier to entry, etc.

Status: Code for the project as envisioned, not just a minimum viable product, is ready for significant production, say, if enough users like the site, a one person company with revenue of $10 million a year, nearly all pre-tax earnings.

Team? Just me, and that's enough for now. Qualifications? Plenty in computing from IBM's Watson lab and much more. For the math, I hold a Ph.D. in applied math from a world class research university -- one advisor had other students build on my research and was later President at CMU.

Status: Code (.NET and SQL Server) for the project as envisioned, not just a minimum viable product, is ready for significant production, say, a one person company with revenue of $10 million a year, nearly all pre-tax earnings.

Lesson: My project is of zero interest to any well known VC. They don't care about any such project. Period.

Before going live, I need to add data -- doing that.

Got delayed by some outside interruptions, e.g., moved.

Early on, but not really now, the work could have been helped by some VC funding. Now, if the project gets even $1 million a year in revenue, then I will not want or need VCs.

So, net, with VCs, when I would have wanted them, they didn't want me; if I get to where they want me, then I won't want them.

There is some advice about VCs: Wait, that is, be successful enough, for them to call you. If that time comes, I will just check my old files and tell them the dates when I did contact them and they were not interested.

I want to make two broad points:

First, the economic shutdown for the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that "50% of the US economy" (whatever the details on that are) is "small business". Next, as I have looked around at the families doing well, e.g., money enough for a 50' yacht, to pay full costs at Harvard, they are nearly all from running a family owned business and never got even 10 cents from a VC. Okay, start and run such a business where computing, the Internet, maybe some secret sauce (now these three can be just dirt cheap, less than some people spend in restaurants for a year) help but without VC funding.

Point: To do well in the US, don't really need VCs; e.g., nearly all the US families doing well are running family owned businesses, all across the US and not just along the east and west coasts, without any VC funding.

Second, there should be some big opportunities in applying what is in the research libraries in math, science, and engineering and/or doing and then applying more such research.

This fact has been well known for ~70 years by the US Department of Defense, CIA, NSA, Department of Energy, NSF, NIH, CDC, NASA, ONR, etc., well known and heavily exploited with huge benefits for US national security, health, and economic prosperity. E.g., we got GPS from a project of the USAF. For some decades, there were similar contributions from Bell Labs -- information theory (e.g., upper bounds on data rates), error correcting codes, the transistor, tiny solid state lasers lighting long haul optical fibers, etc.

Typically these projects are submitted and approved just on paper. The batting average is high: E.g., Keyhole (like Hubble but before Hubble and aimed at the ground instead of the stars), LIGO, the A-bomb, the H-bomb, the SR-71, navigation satellites (first from the US Navy and later from the USAF), nuclear fission power, the SSBNs, TCP/IP, NSF Net (now the Internet), DNA sequencing (the key to detection of SARS-COV-2 and now maybe to a fast vaccine), ..., all worked just as planned, essentially the first time, on or close enough to on time and on budget. Batting average! ROI!

Gee, if the USAF charged a penny for each use of GPS they would have how much money?

If Bell Labs got a penny for each transistor they would have how much money?

Point: The VCs just will not evaluate and fund projects presented just on paper and, thus, are missing out on such developments.

Final Point: VCs make some money and do at times help some projects, but their methods of working are quite narrow, and in the US the paths for making money are in principle and at times in practice much wider. There is a lot of opportunity doing projects the VCs won't fund.