[rwhitman]

I'd argue that the industry tends to swing between larger venture startups to constellations of smaller 'lifestyle'/bootstrapped businesses as technology shifts, in cycles.

The VC capital flows in when there are hard and expensive problems to solve in emerging tech spaces that need a lot of innovation or heavy lifting and, hence, financial runway to survive.

When the tech in the space gets cheaper, the cow paths have been paved and the tech becomes more accessible, it becomes more viable to bootstrap your way into the market. The get rich quick gold rush starts and then everyone floods in to find niches in the market they can fill on their own.

Eventually the bootstrapped businesses fill all the niches they can, the market becomes saturated and it's no longer lucrative or easy to bootstrap in that space. And the cycle begins again