> It seems that there is an increasing trend from Bay Area tech companies (maybe tech in general) to bootstrap by taking in users feedback (twitter RT feature), get to a certain size, and then totally abandon their base.
You should read the book "Crossing the Chasm". This strategy actually makes a lot of sense if you want to be successful. Summary: your early adopters are not your main customers, and there is a divide there. You will hit a ceiling in growth if you continue to focus on the early adopters.
There's a difference between focusing on people and completely abandoning them. One of the reasons many people (myself included) are leaving Twitter in droves is because Twitter has made changes which betray its original community.
In fact, at this point I would argue that Bay Area tech companies are actively hostile towards the people who helped create them. To use Twitter again as an example (because they have done so many stupid things), to come out with the ridiculous "we decided to change likes to hearts" icon crap when many, many people were crying out for some solution to the rampant abuse on the platform, was not just a lack of focus, but a show of active contempt.
One of my biggest criticisms of the growth model (in part championeered by YC) where you focus on getting users first and then figure out how to make money, is that it almost always leads to this sort of betrayal. This is also the general problem with offering "free" services to bootstrap things. There was a period of several years where some of us (again, myself included) were outright begging Twitter to let us pay for our account. This happened again with Ello, and when they took VC money I lost all trust in them.
When you have an entire paradigm of companies that are following this strategy as proposed, over time people will see a pattern, and when a company practises the first steps in that pattern, it's not hard to see where it leads. As a result, I'd argue it leads to an erosion of that initial base, and therefore companies in the future will not be able to bootstrap in the same way.
You should read the book "Crossing the Chasm". This strategy actually makes a lot of sense if you want to be successful. Summary: your early adopters are not your main customers, and there is a divide there. You will hit a ceiling in growth if you continue to focus on the early adopters.