bootstrap

"The deep irony is that this bootstrap idea that we're pursuing now with modern tools and modern ideas is super retro. It's an old idea," Cheung explains.

From Science Daily ● May 19, 2026

In science-fiction scenarios of first contact with extraterrestrials, humans usually bootstrap a common language with mathematics, demonstrating that we know the digits of pi and so forth.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026

SilverSneakers represents just a small slice of that — the costs are not broken out by MedPAC — but it’s significant enough that the bootstrap venture has turned into a big business.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2025

I think she is deeply wrong to let the tobacco company bootstrap these gas stations onto their suit.

From Slate ● Jun. 20, 2025

A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices.

From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith

“You should apply if you want to build yourself up while also building a startup society that bootstraps other startup societies,” its website said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 1, 2026

He had no experience in elected office, no notable history of activist organizing, no college degree, no significant success in the private sector, not even a record of pulling himself up by his proverbial bootstraps.

From Slate ● Jul. 8, 2026

But in the U.S., the ethos of grinding and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is ubiquitous, both in the country’s beginnings and our current environment of always-on technology and work hours.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 15, 2024

Talking about the center, Mabon quoted the adage: “You can’t pull yourself up by the bootstraps if you don’t have boots.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 19, 2023

Teachers exhorted us to be like him, to lift ourselves from poverty by our bootstraps.

From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane

But he’s bootstrapped himself into intelligence and with savvy networking and know-how, he becomes indispensable to the British, volunteering as a major to survey land and negotiate treaties with the Native tribes and French army.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026

He bootstrapped that company and sold it for over $100 million in 2021.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026

But many of these smaller livestream channels are more bootstrapped operations, adherent to the same grind culture their content facilitates.

From Slate ● Sep. 2, 2023

The men bootstrapped the enterprise they now call EarthViews by raising $40,000 from a “friends and family” funding round to pay for equipment and travel.

From Seattle Times ● Jul. 8, 2022

“They’ve always bootstrapped stuff,” yielding cars that were advanced and innovative and that punched above their weight, Mr. Robbins said.

From New York Times ● Apr. 21, 2022

Culturally, this typically gets framed as alpha-male, gym-rat bluster about bootstrapping.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 20, 2026

It’s a quintessential American story, of bootstrapping from the humblest of origins to the literal highest of heights.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 14, 2023

You talk a lot in the book about the ways that women are particularly affected by the myth of bootstrapping.

From Salon ● Apr. 1, 2023

The success of Leo’s empire has long depended upon compartmentalizing and bootstrapping.

From Slate ● Aug. 23, 2022

He had worked as a printer but was now bootstrapping his own print shop on a shoestring, and became entirely self-employed.

From How and When to Be Your Own Doctor by Solomon, Steve