[munificent]

> There is an entirely possible and alternative funding model that perpetually allocates a responsible amount of incremental funds for the purposes of novel R&D.

This works for some but not all business ventures.

There's a reason corporations were invented in the Age of Sail. If you build 5% of a ship, you can't sail to the New World and bring back 5% of the resources. You just sink in the harbor.

(The moral implications of relating modern VC-invested corporations to rapacious European conquests of the already-inhabited-thank-you-very-much New World is not lost on me.)

I believe there are healthy ways to start up a business that has startup costs too large to bootstrap. I agree with you that VCs are often not it.

[mordae]

Or maybe 20 customers who believe that having a shared ship might form a join stock company to take care of their respective 5%... and when the venture proves itself, they might convert it to a publicly traded company and let it scale up with demand.

[tonymillion]

that's literally an angel investor financed startup

[munificent]

> Or maybe 20 customers who believe that having a shared ship

You might describe these people as "capitalizing a venture", in fact, or "venture capitalists".

[ZiiS]

You can build a small ship and a track record of profitable trade with the next port, then the next country over before undertaking an ocean crossing.

[munificent]

But you can't incrementally upgrade that ship to become a large ship.

At some point, you need the capital investment to build a big ship, and the return on that investment is zero unless you build the whole ship.

[tonymillion]

And by the time you've done that 97.3% of all shipping from the new world is being handled by a small handful of companies with gigantic cargo ships.

But congratulations, you've successfully created a small "local" business with a decent number of customers who are reasonably loyal. You should be happy with what you have and possibly invest in future generations who want to colonize the moon or something (assuming you want to expand your wealth)