It really depends on what kind of project it is. Not everything will have a big appeal but if it doesn’t how big is your target audience going to be for the product really.

Open source the research! I know people don’t think this is the best way for a company to do R&D, but it will get tons of people that are interested in whatever you’re doing to help for free and as a bonus you can find some great talent. Also, I’m not saying you need to give away the keys to your company. You could only open source select parts of the R&D to not give away your secrets.

You could implement a ssh tunnel every time it is online. Then you just use a reverse tunnel through that connection.