I don't realistically think there's a "bootstrapped" path to build what Sandstorm was building. Too many pieces needed to be in place before it was a really via

I don't realistically think there's a "bootstrapped" path to build what Sandstorm was building. Too many pieces needed to be in place before it was a really viable product. After a dozen or so eng-years we still had something that was pretty janky. Moreover trying to take a bootstrapped path creates a distraction from the core technology by forcing you to design for ways you can sell more quickly. That might require shortcuts and compromises, or building things that you don't actually need in the long term. That was certainly the case for us: we spent a lot of time engineering a way to paywall certain "enterprise features", and building a paid hosting service (which was sort of antithetical to the whole idea), and we made compromises in the security model to allow us to move faster. I think it's just a fact that most businesses require upfront capital to get off the ground, and some require a lot of it. So you either need founders who are already independently wealthy or you need some sort of venture capital. And yeah sometimes you have a Docker who makes a great piece of technology and can't figure out how to sell it, but would Docker have been built at all otherwise? Maybe it was a loss for the shareholders but it still seems like a win for the industry.