<i>&gt; so raising money almost certainly means higher salaries for employees</i><p><i>&gt; but otherwise the whole thing seems pretty hollow</i><p>uh, what?  why?  how did you come to this conclusion?  you&#x27;re wrong.  not only are you wrong, you are also assuming he&#x27;s being cheap to his employees.  you just made up this fact in your mind, and assume it to be true.  quite frankly, that&#x27;s you projecting.<p>we&#x27;re bootstrapped and we pay people <i>higher</i> salaries to incentivize them to work for a smaller, &quot;unstable&quot; company.  if we raised money tomorrow nobody&#x27;s salary would change.  my salary as a founder probably wouldn&#x27;t change.  i&#x27;m pretty sure that anything beyond a nice dinner to cap the occasion, i.e. just paying ourselves more because some new money showed up, would be frowned upon pretty heavily by anyone investing money.<p>and i am aware of several name-brand funded companies that pay people <i>less</i> than market just for the privilege of having their company on a resume.<p>bootstrapping doesn&#x27;t mean &quot;be a cheapskate and pay everyone under market&quot; it means &quot;earning and using revenues to grow the company at the early stages and possibly beyond&quot;.  you can bootstrap and pay people above market salaries, or pay yourself a wildly inflated salary if you are the owner.<p>you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern small businesses work, probably because you have never run one.