Having worked with small to medium sized businesses for years now, and currently being in the process of launching my own business/startup; I keep butting heads with potential business advisors and mentors over their determination that the goal should be VC or Seed/Series funding.

Everything we discuss always seems to lead back to “well investors will want this”, or “if you want to exit/IPO you need to do it this way”.

What’s wrong with building a businesses that funds itself through sales? Is it really crazy to build a company with no plan of selling a portion of it to investors or having no exit/IPO plan?

This concept truly seems alien to them, yet this is pretty much how every business outside the startup world operates.