Venture is not the only path. Revenue-based financing, debt, crowdfunding, and bootstrapping stories for founders questioning whether VC fits their business.
1h 0m
Backstage Capital's Arlan Hamilton on going from homeless to VC, her $5M crowdfunding raise for her own firm, and educating underestimated founders on how capital actually works.
47 min
A founder who failed 22 times before building a $2.5B company tells My First Million the full arc, including the fundraising dead-ends, near-bankruptcies, and the raise that finally worked.
1h 31m
Base44 founder Maor Shlomo explains building solo to an $80M exit in six months without raising venture capital, including why he turned down VC interest and how that shaped the Wix acquisition.
1h 7m
Zapier CEO Wade Foster explains why the company raised only a tiny seed round and never went back to the well, plus contrarian takes on growth and hiring that follow from profitability.
1h 11m
A longevity startup founder explains to TWiST why they raised in Japan instead of Silicon Valley: investor appetite differences, valuation trade-offs, and cross-border round mechanics.
14 min
Dalton and Michael debate when a startup should bootstrap versus raise venture capital, including honest talk about which businesses are venture-shaped at all.
30 min
Stanford's Grit & Growth episode on fundraising as a marathon, following emerging-market founders through multi-year capital journeys across grants, angels, and VC.
26 min
Uncapped founder Piotr Pisarz makes the case for revenue-based funding as an alternative to venture equity, explaining who it suits and its real costs.