[twainer]

I disagree that one cannot distinguish between the likely ethics of a bootstrap or VC-funded startup. Logically, when a business has its own customers as the only means of support, there is a greater symbiotic relationship - sustained by age-old notions of fair exchange. I work hard to give my customer what they need so that they continue to sustain my business. A big side effect is ethical behavior.

The entities most capable of unfair or exploitative behavior are those who no longer need value that relationship to their customer. Yes, in one case this applies to companies close to failure - no matter their funding source. But as noted elsewhere, the acceptance of investor money adds many layers and new definitions to what 'failure' is.

Failure is no longer just 'going out of business' - it morphs to mean things like not having hit a number, not having made money fast enough, being pushed out of a job because people have lost faith in you, etc. The options for failure proliferate in an investor-funded corporation.

It's that same irony when a Fortune 500 firm makes a nice profit but the stock tanks because they didn't make as much as someone thought they should. Profit = success in the natural world; but somehow it gets turned around to equal failure - oftentimes costing real people their real jobs and costing companies real value of their shares that they could use to conduct real business.

So, as investor-funded companies are allowed only a small number of ways to define success, they are always closer to failure, and are forever more aware of the benefits of unethical behavior - especially when that behavior is so well-shielded by the corporate veil.