[morkalork]

At the point right before taking VC money, what's the safer alternative sources for cash? This is a serious question. The alternative I've seen work is another company in the same field make the investment with an option to further invest or acquire the company later on. Their expectations for growth were a lot more "down to earth".

[sosodev]

You could take traditional small business loans or other types of simple credit, try crowd sourced funding (kickstarter), or just build shit without much or any funding (bootstrap).

That’s not an exhaustive list of course.

[Guvante]

Some VC firms are willing to work with less growth potential.

The problem is those VC firms are much harder to get started with.

After all the whole schtick of the VCs complained about in OP is to fund tons companies and make so much money off the unicorns that it doesn't matter how many fail.

Honestly though there is one upside to VC money: it also caps your losses. Most forms of debt for a small company rely on you being a creditor meaning you can be in the hole if your company fails.

Overall getting money is hard and nuanced which makes sense given there is nearly infinite demand for it.