It is tough to have these two mentalities at the same time:<p>&gt; Your employees adopt your bootstrapped mentality and they, too, are careful of where they spend your money and try to be as resourceful as they can with limited resources<p>and<p>&gt; Could I go and raise a few million bucks in a seed&#x2F;series A round today? As a second-time founder, yes — I’ve said no to several investors already and have a strong network.<p>The biggest expense in almost any startup is employee salaries, so raising money almost certainly means higher salaries for employees.  So you are basically saying: &quot;I&#x27;m rich and have connections, but it is better for the business if we all are very lean&quot;.  While it is true that being lean is probably better for the business, it only works if the employees buy into it.  Maybe you are giving employees tons of equity and that causes them to buy in, but otherwise the whole thing seems pretty hollow.