Well as you can see, the post was taken out of the Profitable & Proud series and was renamed to a QA right after posting.
I guess we are not technically bootstrapped by some incredibly demanding definition of the term.
To me all those things - Bootstrapping, Angel money, Grants, VCs, etc - are just tangential tools in a pretty large toolbox that we as entrepreneurs can draw upon. There is no secret bootstrap society that you get to join if you do that just like there is no secret hammer society that you get to join if you only use hammers for all your carpentry jobs.
In any case, use the right tool for the job. We started a risky business in a crowded space so we bootstrapped. We ran out of cash so we got Angel money. We became profitable so we increased our own spend. We got really good at this and wanted to accelerate so we take VC money to get to our goals faster. It's not rocket surgery.
Quite true. I've mentioned some of those things below, and I absolutely don't mean to denigrate your success, you guys are great. It's just changed the way that I see how you see yourselves, though I guess I should have been thinking that way all along.
They've already proven their business model, have tons of customers, are making a profit, and have a plan for scaling their business. This is the perfect time to take investment - regardless of whether they were bootstrapped to this point.
I don't think anything in the so-called "lean startup" philosophy runs counter to the idea of taking Series A financing when appropriate. Hell, even 37Signals took money from Jeff Bezos...
Oh totally. Just commenting on the change, that's all. I certainly don't think 'lean' means 'never take money,' but it also does demonstrate that Shopify is a 'startup' and not a 'lifestyle business.' Maybe they always were, and I just didn't notice.
I found an interesting bit of info by Tobias on Quora
"...it took about 3 years to reach positive cashflow
and we financed this by not taking salaries as founders,
angel investors and grants (canadian government) all
at once."
That said, congrats to Shopify. You guys do great stuff, and your open source contributions are top-knotch!