Whatever business idea you are working on, and assuming it has the potential to become a money-making business one day, the decision to raise money or bootstrap

Whatever business idea you are working on, and assuming it has the potential to become a money-making business one day, the decision to raise money or bootstrap should depend on what minimizes your overall risks and maximizes chances of success. If bootstrapping, and if bandwidth-limited, you would be growing slowly while the competition / market could be moving at a faster pace, thus increasing your risks. If this is the case, it may be better to raise money and hire people to increase your pace. If you raise money, it should be to solve some real and key problem you have that is solvable with money. That problem may be skill / bandwidth, advertising, patenting, whatever. As far as the problem is real (which means solving the problem will reduce your risks considerably) and it is solvable with money, it is better to raise money than to bootstrap. If you are wrong somewhere in your assessment on what your risks are, where money can and cannot help, how fast the market will end up moving, etc., you are likely to make a suboptimal choice for yourself.