Bootstrapping means that you created your company without taking in any outside investors (from the idiom pull yourself up by your bootstraps). VC means you too

Bootstrapping means that you created your company without taking in any outside investors (from the idiom pull yourself up by your bootstraps). VC means you took venture capital money. A successful bootstraped company generally starts smaller and grows slower than a successful vc-funded company but the founders get to keep all of the ownership. With the advent of cloud computing its getting cheaper and cheaper to bootstrap and it's making bootstrapping much more of a viable and attractive option.