[autolico]

Congrats.

I do understand your position and I share it completely. After working for 5 years at Tomtom, I had an idea. It took me half a year to refine it, hire the right people and basically be ready for some round of funding. Thus I found myself stuck with the usual hassle of producing the right material to convince eventual investors to bet on my company. I spent precious time and efforts in doing useless stuff like business plans, investor packages, etc. And I was also really skeptic about giving away equities. All in all you seek investors for... what? Counseling? Money? Contacts? Not being able to give myself a clear answer to this question I decided to become the owner of my future and I fully funded my startup with roughly $300000: beestar.eu (shamelessly self promoting here :)).

I am perfectly conscious that I might lose a lot of money, but I do need to worry about the technology I am trying to ship rather than inheriting the compromise burden that comes with investor's money (not to mention the usual equity's hemorrhage).

If everything fails, this will still be the most exciting adventure of my life.