[maire]

I was at 2 successful companies that went against the normal VC path.

Vitria was able to move the VC % lower because they were already profitable and demonstrated potential before approaching the VCs. They were only using the VCs for their contacts and not for cash.

VMware never got VC funding. I am not sure why - but they tried. They finally sold themselves to EMC and were later spun out.

[avrionov]

According to Crunchbase VMmare raised almost $400M

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vmware/company_finan...

[kijiki]

2/4 rounds (and the overwhelming majority of the $$$ raised) were years after the EMC acquisition, and immediately before the IPO. Not really what people think of when they talk about raising VC.

The 5 million and 20 million rounds in 2000 were strategic investments from partners who were going to resell ESX, and were done for reasons other than needing working capital. IBM and Dell were the 2 partner investors, IIRC.