As an armchair quarterback I'm a bit surprised about what you've said about "folks with a dev background" (if I didn't focus on distributed systems, I'd likely focus on development tools/services -- and there are tons of bootstrapped companies in that area), but I'll take your word for it.
Sorry — I didn't mean to imply that dev folk don't bootstrap!
What I meant, and expressed poorly, was that dev-ish folk tend to not have some of practices in their toolbox that you can use to validate cheaply (e.g. by knowing how to assess markets well, or knowing how to interview potential customers in a non-directive way, or indeed the ability to talk to customers at all, etc).
We also have a tendency to want to build things because, y'know, that's what we do ;-) We also tend to want to build things really, really well for that awesome future place where we have millions of users. So we over-engineer for where we are now, and the learning we need now.
Because of both of these issues I think folk with a dev background find themselves in a position where VC is the only route forward — when if they'd taken a different approach earlier on they could have continued bootstrapping and avoided VC money until later / forever.
As an armchair quarterback I'm a bit surprised about what you've said about "folks with a dev background" (if I didn't focus on distributed systems, I'd likely focus on development tools/services -- and there are tons of bootstrapped companies in that area), but I'll take your word for it.