Is there a term for the point in time when a product can begin to use itself?

Question

I know there is the term "dogfooding" and have even found other variations on the phrase "... eat our own dog food":

• "drinking our own champaign"
• "eating our own cooking"
• "ice cream our customers like to eat"

These all refer to the act of doing it; after the fact and not necessarily the point in time when it becomes a possibility. This question is looking for a term to define that point in time.

If we were to - temporarily - use the term "inception point" to refer to that point in time, a usage example could be:

"When will our widget-factory project reach the inception point?"

Answer 1

I've always heard that called "bootstrapping." Bootstrapping refers to building a compiler for a given language in the language itself but I think it works here too.

In the case of your example sentence it'd be "When will our widget-factory project be bootstrapped?"