Instead of trying to compete with a company like Apple, these scrappy startups filled the gap left by RadioShack and built multi-million dollar businesses worthy of emulation.

• AdaFruit Industries: Limor Fried started her DIY electronics eCommerce empire as a student at...

• ButcherBox has thrived, earning as much as a million dollars a week by skipping expensive ad channels and developing ongoing, capital-efficient relationships with influencers.
• Cards Against Humanity: They’ve sustained their brand with a series of can...

• PaintNite: While their competitors relied on a slow, expensive franchise sales model, PaintNite paired art teachers with existing bars that wanted to sell wine on weekdays and created a business that did $30 million in revenue the year before it raised venture capital.

Funding doesn’t always come millions of dollars at a time. Founders can scrape together money from grants, incubators, and angels, or even pre-sales.

• CoolMiniOrNot: it started out as a website where geeks could show off their ability to paint Dungeons & Dragons figurin...

Solving an old problem with a new technology or UX layer can be enough to build a multi-billion dollar business.

• Shopify: Shopify’s founders were searching for a shopping cart solution when they were setting up an eCommerce site for snowboarders. Unable to find one, th...

The easiest way to build a useful product is to automate some part of your daily workflow which ensures you’ve got proven demand for your product and a pre-existing funding source.

Successful examples:

• MailChimp: built a tool that would streamlin...

• Wayfair: The company is currently worth $6 billion dollars and because they suffered little dilution, the founders are worth a billion dollars each!
• Zip Recruiter: “We started out with humble ambitions, to bootstrap a lifestyle business,” said Co-fou...

• Mojang: The masons behind Minecraft never raised any venture capital, employed just 50 people, and earned nearly a billion dollars in profit before selling to Microsoft. Minecraft grew by charging users a flat fee, resulting in a $2.5 billion dollar acquisition.

Venture capital has powered nearly every major tech company from Apple to Zappos. Just remember that you don’t need a penny to get started. You don’t need permission from funders to found and scale a startup. So the next time a VC tells you they “pass,” remember these three principles:

Wayfair was profitable from its first month of operation and grew profitably for a decade until they ultimately raised a series A. the company is currently worth $6 billion dollars and because they suffered little dilution, the founders are worth a billion dollars each. Zip recruiter: “we started...

• Ipsy: Youtuber Michelle Phan leveraged her online celebrity — 8M+ YouTube subscribers — to turn it into a phenomenon. 
• ShutterStock: Jon Oringer combined his set of skills and used 30,000 photos from his personal photo library to start a stock photo ...