The value of a startup should be judged by its potential to help the Founder — not everyone else.

But that's not really the way we tend to talk about the value of a startup. We tend to think in terms of how valuable our startups are perceived by people that aren't us, like investors or the outside media.

At the same time we get a very skewed perspective of how many startups even raise funding, much less how many of them ever survive the journey. When we compound those broken perspectives, we make it nearly impossible to realize just how valuable our bootstrapped startups are!

99% of Startups don't Raise Venture Funding

If we're going to assume that only venture-funded startups are more valuable, then we should probably start by understandin...