From dictionary.com:

boot·strap, noun, adjective, verb, -strapped, -strap·ping.

–noun
1. a loop of leather or cloth sewn at the top rear, or sometimes on each side, of a boot to facilitate pulling it on.
2. a means of advancing oneself or accomplishing something: He used his business experience as a bootstrap to win voters.

–adjective

3. relying entirely on one’s efforts and resources: The business was a bootstrap operation for the first ten years.
4. self-generating or self-sustaining: a bootstrap process.

–verb (used with object)

5. Computers. boot1 (def. 23).
6. to help (oneself) without the aid of others: She spent years bootstrapping herself through college.

—Idiom

7. pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps, to help oneself without the aid of others; use one’s resources: I admire him for pulling himself up by his own bootstraps.

Often I have fun conversations with friends running VC or angel backed tech startups and we end up comparing and contrasting their existence with that of our little bootstrap enterprise. But I have noticed that there is a consistent misunderstanding of what it means to bootstrap a business (or at least what I think it means to bootstrap a business).

Often, other people think that bootstrap means not taking venture or angel, and assume that it means you’re investing your own money. To me bootstrapping a business means that the business funds itself by making money from day one. I think this is consistent with definitions 2, 3, 6, and especially 4 above.

I realize that you could argue that the business is a bootstrap if the principals are putting in their own resources… but my take is that the self-reliance in the definitions above applies to the business and not to the people in it. For example: if someone is fabulously wealthy and investing in their own business, I feel like it’s more valid to compare it to a company funded by angel investors than a startup.

In the interest of forthrightness, I should say that each of the principals of JFM are taking reduced salaries, which of course is a form of subsidizing the business. So maybe we’re not strictly a bootstrap either. Then again, doesn’t everyone at a startup take a reduced salary?

I did smile at this though.