0 a piece of leather or other strong material at the back of a boot that you use to help you pull the boot on
1 to improve your situation or become more successful, without help from others or without advantages that others have:
His father had bootstrapped himself out of rural poverty to earn a university degree in business.
Nolan bootstrapped himself into the film business, cobbling together bits of 16-millimetre film stock with $6,000 to make his first feature.
He bootstrapped the company, pouring all his energy into it.
I met a young engineer who had bootstrapped a company to offer mobile internet advertising services to brands.
We have tried to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
More people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Is she still lecturing people without shoes on how to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?
However, regional policy was not, classically, a matter of raising regions from below, or of their lifting themselves up by their bootstraps.
First, we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
In these past years, we have had to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
The industry has shown that it is capable of pulling itself up by its bootstraps.
We cannot expect countries or peoples to lift themselves up by their bootstraps when they have not even boots.
