"Our standard terms are for 10-12% equity."
The moment you give equity in exchange for money no matter whether its tinyseed or whatever, you are not bootstrapping. Your financial risk is lower because you don't have to pay this money back if your company fails. That is not called bootstrapping.
I bootstrapped with my own money AND some smaller loans which I am fully liable to pay off with a personal guarantee. If my business goes down, I am personally liable. That is bootstrapping.
Money is so sensitive! A Google millionaire bootstrapping on surveillance savings or a doctor taking favorable loans for starting a practice is different from say a college grad bootstrapping on no savings. Most SaaS is especially hard as there is typically no real revenue for ~years, compared to say B2B where each customer can easily pay for .5-5 people. So if operational expenses come from revenue, including sales/marketing/r&d, bravo.
For pre-revenue... that's tougher. For a tech startup, consulting/services, SBIR, (lax) corporate day jobs, etc. all give ways to split between the startup and work without risking your nest egg. For b2b, I now like the model of well-paying design partners that you hustle to land before you take the full leap. But some people are rich, or comfortable with the risk/reward, or all sorts of other things, and go with personal guarantees. Pretty sure that's what I did with our first business credit card. In all cases, bravo to anyone who pushes to sustainable growth, it can be a life changer deal for both the company and the individuals, whatever financial path they pushed through.
Why? I also own my own business (an LLC somewhere in Europe), but if it goes down, I am not personally liable, at all (unless it's due to gross negligence established by a court case).
His comment included the fact the he took out loans with a "personal guarantee".
When you're a small business starting out with no assets (like factories, equipment, etc) -- which means no collateral, or no business revenue... the banks won't provide so-called "business loans" unless there's a personal guarantee.
Therefore, if the business fails and the company is shut down, the founder is still financially on the hook to pay back the loans. (Barring drastic options like filing personal bankruptcy.)
