This book is about helping entrepreneurs sift through the noise regarding bootstrapping to craft an informed strategy for successfully navigating the beginning period of a firms existence. The book is a theory-driven, evidence-based look at bootstrapping, defined as: highly creative ways of acquiring the use of resources without borrowing money or raising equity financing from traditional sources (Freear, Sohl, & Wetzel , 1995). In this era of lean startups, effectuation, and bricolage; bootstrapping is oft romanticized, but seldom analyzed.