You can listen to the interview I did with Courtland Allen from IndieHacker to understand that this is far from the case.

https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/033-philippe-lehoux-of-...

OP refers to the article, in which the authors seem to think that they bootstrapped the company, while they did not, in fact.

> Missive is bootstrapped, meaning we never took a dime from investors. We funded it with the cash flow of our other business.

How is this not bootstrapping? Their other business was 'properly' bootstrapped and then they used the profit from that to start this one.

Then bootstrapping lost all its meaning.

I don't care where the investment came from, a VC, your dad, or someone being their own VC. If we start calling that bootstrapping, we need a new name for 'starting a profitable business with nothing but a 5 bucks VPS'.

It is not '1. Become a VC, 2. Invest in your own company.'

> starting a profitable business with nothing but a 5 bucks VPS

That is literally what they did with their first company...

This is no different to launching multiple products under the same company.

So if Google launches a new product tomorrow would you say it was bootstrapped?

The question is moot because Google is so far away from the inception of the company.

These guys ran their first company for 1 1/2 years, then went full-time and seemingly focused most of their energy on this new product.

This is basically a pivot or new product. There are lot's of ways to frame this approach which are analogous to 'properly' bootstrapping.

Well clearly not since they are a publicly traded company and have received millions in venture capital.

Yeah, this is an odd use of bootstrapped. One of the core tenets I see is remaining "independent" or at least free of massive pressure to grow at break neck speeds. I'd imagine they have that.

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