Let’s face it. Bootstrapping sucks. In theory, it should be liberating to be self-funded and self-sufficient at the early stages of running a business. But reality is much less glamorous. For one, we’re small peanuts surrounded by unicorns: our presence in the media, as a result, is almost zero. We’re competing with 10-figure marketing budgets and grinding our teeth to get there. We spend more time scratching our heads than making actual decisions.

Then, we see success stories like Basecamp, a company that could have been a unicorn but chose not to—growing to 50 employees and a customer base of hundreds of thousands along the way.

Holy shit, maybe it is all worth it.

While founders in the VC world are chasing their burn rates, Basec...