The Customer-Funded Business

More than two generations ago, the venture capital community ¿ VCs, business angels, incubators and others ¿ convinced the entrepreneurial world that writing business plans and raising venture capital constituted the twin centerpieces of entrepreneurial endeavor. They did so for good reasons: the sometimes astonishing returns they''ve delivered to their investors and the astonishingly large companies that their ecosystem has created.

But the vast majority of fast-growing companies never take any venture capital. So where does the money come from to start and grow their companies? From a much more agreeable and hospitable source, their customers. That''s exactly what Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Banana Republic''s Mel and Patricia Ziegler did to get their companies up and running and turn them into iconic brands.

In The Customer Funded Business, best-selling author John Mullins uncovers five novel approaches that scrappy and innova