As an entrepreneur, what you really have to ask yourself is: are you pursuing your idea because you think you'll get rich, or because you want to change the world? Are you chasing money, or building value?<p>Valuations may be high right now, and some frothy transactions may be going on, but that doesn't make building a company any easier. If you can bootstrap, work on a project on the side, and keep a backup plan until you're ready to make the leap, do it! If the problem you're chasing is big and scary and capital intensive, then go raise the capital necessary to tackle it, but if not, you may be better off bootstrapping and building a 5 million dollar company you own all of than a 100 million dollar company where you end up heavily diluted [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/06/paths-to-5m-for-a-startup-founder.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/06/paths-to-5m-for-...</a>