[Germanika]

Both approaches can work, but lead to different outcomes. The market for "todo list" apps is absolutely big enough there's room for more than one company. The beauty of the bootstrapped model is you don't need to "win the market" or "beat the competition". Is it making a profit? Congratulations! You're now the owner successful company. Want to grow the company? Re-invest the profits, not your personal life savings.

If the goal is to "win"... ya, you're probably going to need to spend money like it's someone else's, and should take that VC money.

[jariel]

This idea that you 'only need 1% of the market to be rich' is not always so great.

There are not that many companies that can do this, usually early movers, people who caught a wave of interest.

For something just a bit more complicated than 'To Do' he was going to need to take on VC money.