So, why would a company that's already made the leap from bootstrapped startup to successful business want to keep using the bootstrapping process as it moves forward?

Well, in the video below, Austin-based bootstrapper Bijoy Goswami explains that even after a startup company has grown large and successful there may be reasons to tap into its bootstrapping "DNA".

To expand on Bijoy's points here, I can offer at least five solid reasons for a company not to forsake its bootstrapping roots even after reaching the stage where other ways of financing operation and growth have become more attainable.

1. Remember your roots. Those roots have allowed your company to control costs, live within its means, grow with income, find innovative solutions and respond quickly to opportunities without being a slave to a rigid business plan or demanding investors. If some of those qualities will serve your larger more successful firm in the future-and I can't see how they wouldn't-then stay close to your bootstrapping roots even if you take advantage of some of the opportunities that size and success now offer.

2. Contain your costs. Bootstrappers know how to make do. But it is amazing how many larger companies become strapped in to costs that sometimes have nothing to do with operating the business (like large spacious offices, large staffs and the best technology money can buy.) The good news is that even when your company can afford more keeping your bootstrapping ways will help you make decisions about what is truly important and help you make the best of your resources instead of looking helplessly at crippling costs.

3. Grow without debt. Obviously, financing, had it been available to you while bootstrapping your company, would have also brought debt, debt that would have added to the necessary cash flow your company needed just to survive. Remember that, even once your company is successful with cash rolling in, financing for expansion will put greater demands on what you must earn. Try shifting some of that cash flow to growth instead. Montana entrepreneur Andrew S. Fields grew a successful traditional print shop into an innovative online printing service using cash flow from his existing business.

4. Protect your equity. Greg Gianforte argues:

Bootstrappers wind up owning much, if not all, of what they create. This is a huge consideration. When Bootstrappers succeed, they get to keep their winnings. Some can even pass them along to their children. In a [traditionally financed] company, on the other hand, you have...to achieve a tremendous amount of growth to profit personally-since you have to fulfill your investors' ROI expectations first. In fact, once you're addicted to external financing, you can see your shares totally diluted by subsequent rounds of funding. So you can wind up with a successful business and little personal financial gain to show for it.

5. Create innovation. Bootstrapping can create innovation as a byproduct mainly because it forces the bootstrapper to seek solutions outside the traditional scope of business options open to more established or well funded companies. The bootstrapper is also free from the meddling of big investors who might tend to discourage these untried approaches in favor of more traditional but not always successful solutions. Above Goswami suggests that returning to a company's bootstrapping ways, aside from more practical considerations, will also restart the innovative process helping the company break down traditional barriers to find innovative solutions for both operational issues and creation of new products.