There is a version of bootstrapping that mistakes frugality for virtue and turns every spending decision into a referendum on character. This version produces operators who are undercapitalized not because they don’t have money but because spending it feels like failure, who spend thirty hours solving a problem that a $200 tool would have resolved in thirty minutes, and who confuse the appearance of leanness with the reality of leverage. The inability to spend when spending is correct is not a bootstrapping virtue. It is a liability dressed up as one.