According to Investopedia:
Bootstrap – A situation in which an entrepreneur starts a company with little capital. An individual is said to be boot strapping when he or she attempts to found and build a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the new company.
Investopedia Commentary – Compared to using venture capital, boot strapping can be beneficial as the entrepreneur is able to maintain control over all decisions. On the downside, however, this form of financing may place unnecessary financial risk on the entrepreneur. Furthermore, boot strapping may not provide enough investment for the company to become successful at a reasonable rate.
I Googled “Why Entrepreneurs Fail”
http://learn.trizle.com/posts/865-why-entrepreneurs-fail They can’t relate to customers so they can’t sell.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1154/is_v74/ai_4116367 They’re uncoachable, unwilling to be taught. They make the same stupid mistakes everybody’s already made.
http://andrewbode.wordpress.com/2007/04/28/why-entrepreneurs-fail/ Confusion in the order of importance between logic and passion.
http://urbanworldonline.com/6-reasons-why-entrepreneurs-fail/ No mentors, support groups…Going it alone. Won’t invest in their own learning.
Are you a bootstrapped entrepreneur? Will you admit to any of this? Do you want to fix it? Would doubling or tripling your sales in a year fix it? If your answers are, “Yes.”, “Yes.”, “Yes.”, “Yes.” Send your phone number via my email link at the top of the page. If any of the answers are, “No.” Good luck with that.
RainMakers & Sales Rock Stars 
Couple questions on this one. I think the majority of Entrepreneurs have to start out as Bootstrappers. Where would the capital come from? Are you implying that Bootstrappers fail because they are using cash flow money to grow the business? I think the best way to grow a company is to use what I call growth money. This is borrowed funds to use only to grow the business. If you use cash flow to grow the business it will eventually make the business fail. You will be able to see the damage from this every time the company sales slow down and cash flow slows. Using a credit line or a business loan to fund the growth is the best way. But this is very hard to do. Banks will not just hand over a large credit line or loan to a new business. I have been through this and it takes years of hard work to prove to the banks that you will be around to pay the bill. I think consultants forget how hard it is to get to this level. Young entrepreneurs just don’t have the funds available sometimes to fix all the problems at once. Take GoodFellas. We started our company with $25,000 dollars. We had no name, advertising, equipment, tools, office space, referrals, and didn’t have all the business skills needed to run a company, and believe it or not Massachusetts really doesn’t help out new companies very much so new companies pay more for insurances, workers comp and so on until they are established. The money to pay for all you see above came from jobs we sold, personal credit and very creative ways. We knew we needed all the items listed above but the training for ourselves was the most important. The first education piece we invested in was the Kurlan training. No funds to pay for this but we knew we needed it. Next we hired a full time sales person and we enrolled in sales mangers training. We worked with Mike Egan and Rick on growth management. Than myself and three of our carpenters went through Certification training for 12 weeks. Next we hired a remodeling consultant to work with us on our production process. It is great if you can sell and close deals but in our business if you can’t build it and build it right you lose huge money! The remodeling consultant is working on our processes from job sold through completion. We learned we can sell better if our processes are in tune. Next we will be learning how to hire the best people to work with us to grow the company. The moral of the story is all these steps have to happen for sure but they can not be funded and done all at the same time or too quickly because the money just isn’t available!
I think this is funny. It’s so typical that people that are doing it right think that they’re doing it wrong. The only thing more common is those people that are doing it wrong but think that they’re doing it right. OK. For the record: Goodfellas relate to customers and they can sell. Goodfellas are very coachable, totally willing to be taught. They learn from other people’s stupid mistakes. Although they are very passionate, they are trying to be logical. They also have mentors, support groups, and each other and they not only invest in their own learning, but are adamant that their people grow too.
Thanks for the article! I enjoyed reading it and seeing your views that were pointed out. I am on the verge of learning how to make big bucks by posting ads on sites that accept them. In the economy today I realize it is hard to find work but I feel the internet is always busy and can still make money.
I realize that this article is spam, but notice that this spam comment acknowledges that posting comments is a way to attract attention to yourself as I mentioned in this webinar “Double Your Sales Using the Internet Without Blogging or Buying Expensive Software”