Has stackoverflow ever had a bootstrappy phase of profitability or has it been a VC bonfire ever since inception? If the latter is closer to the truth, I find it a little too easy to talk down the person in charge of keeping investors happy for showing signs of desperation instead of continuing rose-tinted visions from the early days. (if it has been profitable, yeah, shame on you for cutting up the goose that laid golden eggs in search for more)
I think that it did. It was initially created by only a few people in 2008 [1] but then Joel Spolsky wrote a blog post about seeking VC investment in early 2010 [2] and the series A was announced in May that year [3]. The VC investment round was around the same time as the company announced the free Stack Exchange network for other topics not covered by their original site [4].
