[robocat]

> They allowed to make the transition and go full grow mode.

The point of bootstrapping is making the compromise where you trade a lower growth rate for the benefit of retaining 100% ownership of your business. Your statement is a VC funding model, even if the money is called seed and you are not trying to become a unicorn.

Your giving away equity for money is simply not bootstrapping. Calling your business bootstrapped is lying in my opinion. What I think doesn’t matter, but being deceitful is silently judged by others where their opinions do matter to you, and the consequences of that are usually invisible.