What are creative ways to pivot or find partners/co-founders for a viable bootstrapped business that, due to outside factors, is in decline?

It is very hard to give actionable feedback without more details.

You asked about creative, "unseen" opportunities on your balance sheet.

Also make a list of things you and the team, or your product, are good at.

A great example of this is the story behind Slack, it was just an internal communication tool for a gaming company. When the gaming company struggled, the released the communication tool and it took off as its own business.

Inventory what you have, what works well, what needs your clients have, and what you can offer to solve those problems.

I'm happy to schedule a call to discuss more.

Without specifics it's hard to say, but in general I advise clients to consider where revenue is coming from, what assets already exist, and how to leverage those assets into addition revenue in different forms. Existing users, especially who have paid, should react well to new offers if the offers are segmented and presented properly.

On the strategic or equity partnership side you're obviously going to want to look for businesses who have what you need and who want what you have. There can be a structured research project for that.

I'd be happy to talk with you about this. I've bootstrapped all of my startups and some of them had to be "merged" or dissolved into other entities as you described. I was able to engineer fairly strong deals in each case that, while not always cash rich, did advance the agendas of everyone at the table, and did have strong PR spin that allowed us all to move forward well.