Venture Capital Admits It’s Obsolete. Now What?

In Part I of this series, readers met Geoff Chapin, the founder of C-Combinator, a climate-tech startup that removes rotting, methane-emitting seaweed from Caribbean beaches and turns it into sustainable products. Chapin considered funding his company through traditional venture capital, but ultimately took other routes.

“Mostly, we’ve done convertible notes from family offices and angel investors, doing checks between $50,000 and $250,000,” Chapin told me. “We’ve raised almost $4 million in that way.”

The rationale for bypassing traditional VC was twofold. One, he didn’t think there were many VCs who were well-positioned to intelligently back C-Combinator’s mission. But perhaps more important, why should a founder surrender the substantial equity that VCs seize if she doesn’t have to?

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