There's nothing bad/wrong about how you did it, but it's not bootstrapping. Saying it is makes it confusing for newbies which means they're more likely to be taken advantage of by VCs that realize they can market themselves as a "bootstrapper fund."
This is why Rob Walling (co-founder of TinySeed) likes to use the term "fundstrapped". There are a lot more funding options out there that do not come with the narrow pathway associated with typical venture funding.
Bootstrap is a word with a specific meaning. It is not a spectrum it is a specific state of a spectrum.
It sounds like ScrapeBee has more bootstraping elements than VC elements. It's a hybrid. Less VC pressures but still some.
That doesn't mean it actually is one though.
And actually muddying what terms mean is the unhelpful part.
They came from Tinyseed, why wouldn't they use "fundstrapped?" Because it doesn't sound as cool, and they know VCs aren't cool as far as the independence denoted by the term "bootstrapped" goes.
There's no good reason to change the definition of this. The disparagement is trying to co-opt a term that shouldn't be co-opted. If the headline was how we built a 1M ARR business from seed funding it'd be a very compelling article still. Now the sourness comes from trying to redefine a term that has very concrete meaning without providing strong justification for doing so.
My exact point. It's just wordplay.