That was a short answer, of course it could be refined :). This part of Steve definition is for me the most fundamental: "The goal of your early business model

That was a short answer, of course it could be refined :). This part of Steve definition is for me the most fundamental: "The goal of your early business model can be revenue, OR profits, or users, OR click-throughs – whatever you and your investors have agreed upon". When bootstrapping you cannot afford to have a business model that can generate anything else than revenue. Except if you optimize for time while having another full-time job for example. I was not at all implying that you can't do anything meaningful if you don't raise money. But again it depends what you mean by meaningful. If by meaningful you mean developing a product / idea that will completely disrupt an industry or the way people live (think Tesla, AirBnB, Apple & co), I'd argue that 99% of the time, people with that ambition will use the VC way. If by meaningful you mean building a strong business, generating millions of $ and creating hundreds of jobs (think BaseCamp, MailChimp, ConvertKit), I agree that raising money is not mandatory. But I stand by my point, if you want to change the world, you should probably aim for the VC road.