37signals is a broken clock that is right twice a day. It's blog is very effective content marketing for it's SMB basecamp product.

One of my favorite examples: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33...

I think the real answer is the VC model works well for some cases, and bootstrapping is OK too! Both have their downside! Many VCs will tell you this directly. No need to get religious about it.