It wasn’t without temptation or struggle to stay like this. Especially in the early years, before our bombastic views on venture capital, the IPO rat-race, and other ills of funding were known. We had, I think, close to 50 different VCs get in contact.
Ironically, part of what did give us the confidence to turn down that whole world was a small sale of equity to Jeff Bezos. That gave our personal bank accounts just enough ballast that the big numbers touted by VCs and acquisition hunters lost their lure.
37signals, the poster child of the bootstrapped world, took investment two years after they launched the product.
Jason and David were able to hedge their bets. That Bezos investment removed a lot of the stress and risk that comes from bootstrapping a product.
