It sounds strange now but I suspect for most of history this was true of businesses large and small. I wonder when external funding became "the rule" for successful companies rather than the exception?
And probably historically it would be (even) more likely to be significantly self-funded as opposed to being all but unfunded and 'bootstrapping', that's my impression anyway.
Why is it impossible to believe that a company can start small, become profitable and grow without VC funding? This is how the vast majority of businesses become successful.
They only switched over to the SaaS model maybe five or six years ago, before that you'd buy one copy the application and then buy a newer version when you felt like it. Now you're basically buying a new copy every year no matter what, just like everything else.
There was a huge controversy when they switched and the backlash made them re-evaluate to this which I think is a fair license.
And I agree with you on the upgrades.