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Where venture funding dictates that a company “move fast and break things,” choosing to bootstrap, crowdfund, or raise money via alternative investors can give you more control over your growth rate, which can often work in a company’s favor. Patagonia, for example, reported revenue of $800M in 2016, despite having never taken any venture capital funding.* That said, Patagonia took over forty years to grow to that size, and VC dollars work better for companies interested in high compound annual growth rate (CAGR), which translates to achieving high market caps and margins within five to ten years. Stories of other companies that chose to grow slowly can be found in the book Small Giants.