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Learn about me & my missionJuly 9th, 2025 | Bootstrapping: Essay.
Last Updated on September 22nd, 2025
This text was fully written by a human.
I’d dare to say that in every working environment, there is some “great lie.” That one thing they tell you to control you. My feeling is that, in the startup world, the great lie is ”get yourself funded.”
Why Do Founders Believe They Need Funding?
Funding from investors is often treated as success in itself, and taken as a stamp of quality. According to the National Venture Capital Association’s 2026 Yearbook, venture funding actually reaches only a tiny sliver of the companies founded each year.
Of course, there are many startups that MUST raise or otherwise, they must die. From the cash-heavy startups in biotech or robotics that need millions of initial cash injection just to create the IP, to the frontier AI startups that need millions to train their original models.
Is Raising More Than You Need Actually Smart?
But raising more than a company needs has its own costs. According to Crunchbase News, overfunding inflates valuations and makes follow-on rounds harder to close. Funding rarely buys safety either: per CB Insights, the startups that shut down in its dataset had raised $17.5B combined, a median of $11M each, before running out of cash.
But in most cases, there is another way to go about the problem. The forgotten, uglier sister of fundraising: bootstrapping. As Harvard Business School’s Noam Wasserman found, founders who raise more capital tend to keep less control, and four out of five are eventually pushed out of the CEO seat.
Are you into bootstrapping? Follow me on LinkedIn, X & Instagram Are you into bootstrapping? Follow me on LinkedIn, X & Instagram Are you bootstrapping? Follow me on LinkedIn, X & Instagram Are you bootstrapping? Follow me on LinkedIn, X & Instagram Are you bootstrapping? Follow me on LinkedIn, X & Instagram One Last Word: What’s My Takeaway From Bootstrapping?
PS: This guy is (and always was) a rolling stone. And he got a Nobel prize, a Pulitzer, an Oscar, 11 Grammies, 8 Grammies Hall of Fame (whatever that is), …he didn’t even care enough to come receive all these accolades in person. Rolling until today.
Please cite as:
Bielczyk, N. (2025, July 9th). Bootstrapping: Essay. Retrieved from: https://nataliabielczyk.com/bootstrapping-essay/
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Copyright © Natalia Bielczyk, PhD. All rights reserved.
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