“It has to be a monopoly given how much money has been pumped in it right, otherwise it's not worth the return on investment, and in our case we see that very differently... we don't have a need for usury.”

Bootstrapped economics let you survive happily in saturated categories

Because Genius Scan never raised, they aren't forced into a monopoly endgame against Adobe or Apple's built-in scanner. Apple shipping native scanning never measurably hurt growth. Bootstrapped unit economics let you survive happily in a saturated category that would bankrupt a VC-backed competitor — competition stops being existential.