This has little to do with whether you are VC backed or bootstrapped.
The amount of effort to sustain yourself is going to be almost the same regardless of which category you are in. Either you have a category that is popular but will attract dozens of competitors no matter how small your niche is or you have a product that requires effort to market.
These days with so many no/low-code tools getting a product into market has never been easier. And that's both a positive and negative for bootstrappers.
Bootstrapped and infinite runway doesn’t go hand in hand lol.
Runway always costs. By that definition it’s artificially subsidized.
That definition sounds more like a project than a product/startup.
Bootstrap is a business, cash flow is like blood flowing with oxygen in it, so the body can move and go do thing
Steve Blanks’s definition is a good or that a startup is a temporary organization dedicated to finding a repeatable and scalable business model.
Life costs money, if a project is coddled to never become a product. it’s artificially subsidized by an investor (you) and default dead.. and it’s not a business that makes profit to pay the Bills or pay for growth.
The amount of effort to sustain yourself is going to be almost the same regardless of which category you are in. Either you have a category that is popular but will attract dozens of competitors no matter how small your niche is or you have a product that requires effort to market.
These days with so many no/low-code tools getting a product into market has never been easier. And that's both a positive and negative for bootstrappers.