If you restrict yourself to only doing things the "proper way", then you are going to be competing with people doing it other ways, including what you consider

If you restrict yourself to only doing things the "proper way", then you are going to be competing with people doing it other ways, including what you consider to not be the proper way - taking investment to go for hyper growth before profitability. Can your bootstrap startup compete with a startup that has outside funds to hire more than you, market more than you, release more often than you, and learn more than you? I've noticed even the rich people with 1 or more big exits behind them here in SV often still take investments for their next startups. They don't lose all their money if things go wrong, and their investors pull a strings to help them, since they have money in the game. You lose a lot of advantages when you reject investment, and you can end up risking a lot more.