Bootstrapping is not a religion. The goal is not to remain capital-independent forever regardless of circumstances — the goal is to build a healthy business, and sometimes outside capital is the right input at the right moment. The question is not whether to take money but when the conditions that justify it are actually present.

The clearest case for raising is market timing risk: a situation where a window for dominance is genuinely open, is genuinely closing, and where the bottleneck between your company and that window is capital rather than something else. Network effects businesses — marketplaces, platforms, communication tools — often fit this profile. If you need to reach a critical mass of supply and demand before a competitor does, and you can reach it with capital you cannot generate from revenue alone, the argument for raising is real.