It will depend a lot on the situation. In my personal observation, bootstrapped businesses fare better in many important aspects. But this might be due to surv

It will depend a lot on the situation. In my personal observation, bootstrapped businesses fare better in many important aspects. But this might be due to survivorship bias. If you are patient and your business allows, I think there is a lot of advantages of keeping full control and having to go through all of the lessons at a slower pace and, more importantly, at the pace of your choosing. The company I am currently working with ran into some problems and decided to pause the growth and fix some stuff before resuming. This is only possible because the the founders are fully owners of the company and can do whatever we decide makes best sense. On the other hand there are situations where the winner takes it all. If you are in this kind of situation you probably should take funding as long as it is not going to be distracting you from your product and growing your company. I think you use the funding like any other loan. What are you buying with it? Do you have to take it? How much do you really need? Are benefits higher than the costs?