Fair point - what I'm also saying though is that this step, and the unique manner in which 37signals accomplished this step, is not part of their advice for oth

Fair point - what I'm also saying though is that this step, and the unique manner in which 37signals accomplished this step, is not part of their advice for others. 37signals offers workshops on keeping it real, but not on building the hype. Before you start bootstrapping make sure you aren't wasting your time or you could end up yanking on those straps for 3 years and little to show for it. I think the democratization of software, of the ability to build websites etc, is a wonderful thing, but I also think that it has tended to undervalue the marketing aspect. Perhaps its because for so many years the coders worked under the yoke of 'business types' who didn't know why a baby couldn't be delivered in one month with 9 mothers and now we feel like we can break free. Hopefully someone will come along with some open source marketing AI and I won't have to worry about it.