I am always amazed by the lack of historical knowledge among large portions of the HN crowd (not knocking you, just amused). Read up on the story of how eGroups was created (by Larry Page's brother, no less).
Everything under the sun's been done.
Everything under the sun's been done.
http://www.amazon.com/Bootstrap-Lessons-Learned-Building-Suc...
(Edit: the Amazon page doesn't make clear that the book, though published in 2001, is about a desktop software company from the early PC days.)
I think that was the point he was trying to make, not that it's never happened before.
I'm just callin' it as I see it. As someone who sits in this world more or less 24/7, I can't remember the last time (prior to the last couple months) where a bootstrapped company gained wide-acceptance like has been happening recently.