I used to work at a company like that. Our competitor was all over tech crunch, etc but we were completely unknown to the tech community. We still beat them because we were focused on our audience which had nothing to do with the tech world.
I say this because, never taking VC is not a great long term business goal. Accepting outside investment is a business decision and one that in Microsoft's case probably helped all their employees and certainly did not hurt them.
And they send a lot of email, give back to their community (Atlanta, GA), and sponsor a lot of independent art and media (podcasts).
https://www.inc.com/magazine/201802/mailchimp-company-of-the...
https://www.inc.com/robbie-abed/this-chicago-startup-sold-it...
I made up the numbers here but I think many founders are happy to get that first or second base hit of change your life but not quite FU money safety net vs VC money forcing the bipolar choice between home run or strike out.
You've got enough to buy a house in SF, put your kids through college, and not have to work again, for let's say 50 years with a decent annual spend, if you put most of it into a retirement account.
That was in 2014. In 2018 it is way more difficult to bootstrap an online content company (Would love to be proven wrong with an example though).
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/zealot-media-buys-scott-delon...
(And yes, a bootstrapped business worth over $100MM is probably generating a meaningful profit, but the founders may not be comfortable reinvesting it.)
Microsoft took a small mezzanine round right before they went public. They didn't need the cash, but it brought investment bankers on board so that they had an incentive to get the best possible price in the IPO. Similar story with Whatsapp; they didn't need the cash, but having Sequoia on board gave them a stamp of approval that probably helped their negotiating leverage both in attracting employees and in selling to Facebook.
