Don’t Design Your Business Around VC - Deepstash
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Don’t Design Your Business Around VC

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:

  • It’s possible to get a tech-enabled business off the ground with no capital.
  • It’s feasible to scale a tech business rapidly with very little capital.
  • It’s often in the founder’s best interest to limit the amount of capital they take.

92

496 reads

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Sell! Sell! Sell!

  • RXBar: When one of the entrepreneurs behind RXBar shared his ambitious business plan with his father, he told his founder son “You need to shut up and sell 1,000 bars.”
  • Scentsy: They sold candles at swap meets when they couldn’t afford to buy ads.

90

799 reads

Start With a Capital Efficient Product

Start With a Capital Efficient Product

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...

94

1.12K reads

Be Miserly with Marketing

  • 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...

91

643 reads

Efficiency > Capital

  • 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.

91

531 reads

Everyone’s Money is Green

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...

90

789 reads

Old Problem + Existing Business Model + New Tech = $$$

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...

101

1.02K reads

Automate Your Workflow

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...

100

1.23K reads

Blessed are the Unfundable

  • 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...

89

481 reads

Build a Community

  • 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.

89

518 reads

Fortune Favors the “Boring”

  • SurveyMonkey was founded in the dot-com bubble of the 90s; it survived the dot-com crash and steadily grew into a nine-figure run rate, only raising $100 million 11 years after getting started.
  • Grasshopper is a phone networking company that had 150,0...

89

510 reads

You Can Always Raise Capital Later

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...

90

507 reads

Scratch Your Own Itch

Scratch Your Own Itch

  • 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 ...

93

902 reads

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kimtrevi

Recruitment consultant

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