200 years ago, railway was the big thing. Everyone was interested in building railways, steam engines, etc. Companies sprung up, many people got rich. Nowadays,

200 years ago, railway was the big thing. Everyone was interested in building railways, steam engines, etc. Companies sprung up, many people got rich. Nowadays, the railways are already built and transport many goods. Building new railways is extremely expensive now because we have lost the know how, workforce, have higher labour standards, bureaucracy etc. Nowadays we are mainly considering how to operate railway tracks instead of building new ones. Nowadays, software is the new economic frontier and enjoys explosive growth. The land that software embarks into is still virgin, and it's comparatively easy to build a new software company. It's a growth market. In such an environment, bootstrapped companies are generally at a disadvantage to VC started companies, as bootstrapped ones can focus on capturing the market before becoming profitable, while bootstrapped ones have to keep both in mind. So people turn to VCs. This situation of explosive growth is kinda unique to software, and VCs aren't the only solution to the problem, but the dot com bubble has shown what happens when companies go public more early on in the process.