Startup Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Bootstrap Launch Your Startup! I advised dozens of new ventures and prospective entrepreneurs participating in the interactive seminar I presented at PodcampNYC this past weekend.

The New York Angels early-stage investor consortium acknowledges bootstrapping for technology and new media startups: At a recent Silicon Alley event, while hyping his own angel venture hyping angels, Chairman David Rose nevertheless noted  that bootstrapping is not only the “best of all” financing strategies if feasible, but the defacto fuel for more than 90% of startups yearly.

Sarah Lacy, on the other hand, relegates bootstrapping to “post 1990’s companies” given all the venture capital money she assures is “sloshing around” now. Lacy is abundantly confident in her capital prognostications, although hard data to back up her sweeping industry assertions is conspicuously lacking.

Is Twitter really “a steal” at any price as Lacy claims? AND are VCs chomping at the bit, waving blank checks, salivating for the privilege of “cozying up” to the “true Web visionary” Evan Williams, as Lacy imagines?

Lacy’s claim that “Twitter is on the verge of potentially going mainstream in a big way” is but another big bad dose of Marc Andreessen-Fred Wilson Ning/Twitter “viral loop” cheerleading: I underscored yesterday the fragility of Twitter’s crossover dreams: Twitter is deemed but a “rounding error” among “podcast consumers” and its MTV hopes were not realized.

SEE: Twitter Gets Messy Union Square Ventures Startup Rx  and Ning, Twitter Viral VC Ventures: Startup Loops That Kill  

Lacy comes down to earth noting: “Sweetheart deals” only come to those with “some serious star power.” Yes, as I noted as well when Marc Andreessen announced his $60 million Series D “insurance.” Nevertheless, technology entrepreneurs can rule their own star destiny, thanks to intelligent and resourceful bootstrapping.

The notion that Internet innovation is all tied up in a handful of trendy, well-connected Web 2.0 power plays that go by the names of Slide, Ning, Facebook, Federated Media, is hogwash, and it ignores the reality of an entrepreneurial engine that fuels our economy: Home-based, sole proprietors.

Lacy’s misappropriated Twitter ecstasy: : The “last interesting, innovative company to come out of the early 2000s Web 2.0 fertile crescent.” RIGHT, a Twiter “fertile” for a river of self-indulgent, self-promos engendering such “interesting” conversation as Lacy’s own “seriously screw all you guys,” 01:31PM March 09, 2008 from txt, and Howard Lindzon’s illicit promo last week for Twitter at Twitter investor Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson blog, hailing ”flash mobs” for thinly traded stocks: