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Comment by marsrover | Hacker News Reader

It bothers me that nobody even tries to bootstrap anything anymore. A lot of companies would be fine not taking millions from VCs.

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Cloud computing makes bootstrapping cheaper too. I don't understand the rush to get funding, unless you see it as a mark of status and a temporary means to a lifestyle.

Many people want to work in startups for the wrong reasons. A desire for social cachet or the lure of quick riches are bad reasons to work for startups. You can make more money for less work working at an established corporation. And who cares about what twentysomethings think of you.

Good reasons for working in startups include wanting to build, rather than maintain, products, learning faster, gaining experience faster, working on the cutting edge, and dealing with less bureaucracy. There is also a contrarian or rebellious streak in some startups that can suit certain people.

That said, all these good things can be had, and had more of, in a bootstrapped company rather than a funded company.

Step outside the echo chamber and you'll find tons of bootstrapped and non-vc backed companies.

They might even find perfectly fundable companies that were forced to bootstrap through no choice of their own because this culture in this article is not actual startup culture, it is Silicon Valley culture.

My question is, do companies sometime receive backing from VCs to open doors, and not necessarily because they need funding?

Yes, very often. Just like people go to Harvard or Yale for the name and the network - not the education.

See Y Combinator now. Which people go to for the name and the network - not the money.

Many people do. Take a stroll through 'Ask HN' and you'll find some of the (and lots of the not-so) successfully bootstrapped businesses.

VC funding is all about eating the world. That's a high bar.

But a burning passion, persistence, a virtual server - and some luck - should be enough for anyone to take a bite out of it.

The problem with bootstrapping is, assuming you've identified a profitable business, you're in serious danger of losing out to a well funded copycat.

They do. If they scale, they become startups. If not, they stay as a normal business.

If they scale they become big businesses. If not they stay as small businesses.

plenty of companies do, they just don't get any press coverage because they don't have a PR budget, or much of a marketing budget at all.

Or they spend their marketing budget efficiently targeting their potential customers. The reason that you don't hear about most bootstrapped companies is you are almost certainly not in their market.

And because they operate in a small market, just big enough so they can be very profitable, but don't want other people to know about it and compete with them...

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