Bootstrapping vs. Venture Capital: The Ultimate Entrepreneur's Dilemma

When you start your company, it is nice to know that you have some flexibility on your exit strategy and founders. When you're bootstrapping paying for yourself, you often focus on profitability and the long term payoff rather than an exit. Or like selling and going public because this is your baby and you want to keep it producing for a long period of time. You're not really looking to like buying a house, fixing it up and flipping it. You might be wanting to build something you can run for a long time, pass it on to your kids, make it a generation to generation type business. So venture capital, they typically expect an exit in the form of an acquisition. You don't want to be acquired by somebody else or an IPO a few years down the road where they can get in on that founder stock and get a chance for big returns. So they're going to be pushing for rapid scaling.