Unethical Bootstrapping & Investor Liability – Pirated Software
I have been contemplating writing this post for about 2 years, and have been jotting down various notes for it for at least a year.
There are lots of ways to unethically nudge your fledgling company along. For example, you can artificially inflate your numbers. “You’ll love our site! Millions of other people are already using it!” Faux-Guerilla marketing, is another example (e.g. posting a message on a forum somewhere pretending to be a user in love with your product or service). “Procuring” copies of your competitor’s proposals by pretending to be a customer is also something I’ve seen before. The sky is truly the limit when you operate with little or no regard to ethics.
However, the widespread use of pirated software among startups is probably the most prevalent problem that I’ve seen.
I have come to the conclusion that there are fundamentally two types of entrepreneurs: opportunists and innovators. Those that exploit and those who dream big.
Bootstrapping any new startup is always full of challenges; a big one, of course, being controlling the burn rate of the venture in the face of trying to get bigger. Steve Walden, a former Prodigy exec, a good friend, and a 
Welcome to another riveting edition of ye olde mailbag. Earlier today, I received an email from a struggling entrepreneur trying to get “over the hump” of initial financing. A great idea, some early positive signs, yet endlessly “stuck” trying to raise some money.
Entrepreneurship isn’t something you fall into and out of like a bad habit. It isn’t something you turn on and off at will. Rather, it’s more like a special “E” chromosome that certain people begrudgingly accept when they’re born. You either have it, or you don’t. As humans, we are capable of putting entrepreneurship into a state of dormancy (much like my personal battle, being addicted to 
Bootstrapping is a sort of “Holy Grail” for entrepreneurs. Those that do it well swear by its power. The disbelievers, as adamant as they are in their opposition to it, are often left behind as the more agile bootstrappers start hitting those critical early milestones. In this piece, I’ll dive into some of my own tips and strategies for bootstrapping your startup. If you have some tips of your own, I welcome you to post a comment!
