9个聪明绝顶的创业融资故事

    本文为与《创业者》杂志的合作内容。下文最初发表于Entrepreneur.com网站。

    找不到投资者时，你是否会觉得自己的商业构想无从实现？大多数创业新手都有同样的感受。

    通过与一些公司老板和非营利性机构创始人的电子邮件交流，我发现了九位非常聪明的创始人。他们通过另类的方式募集资金，最终让自己的项目取得了成功。

    1. 寻求国际赞助

    The Zebra公司从事的业务与旅游搜索引擎服务商Kayak有些类似，只不过它提供的是汽车保险搜索引擎。当亚当•里昂在奥斯丁启动这家公司时，他决定从海外寻找一家运用相同业务模式，并且已经获得成功的公司。里昂最终联系上了英国亿万富翁西蒙•尼克松，后者凭借个人理财网站Moneysupermarket.com获得了大量财富。

    里昂向尼克松提出，自己想成为他的美国合作伙伴，尼克松接受这项提议。

    里昂在邮件中称：“并非所有人都能想到在其他新兴市场寻找有类似业务模式经验的投资者。但对于我们而言，这项合作已经超越了利益关系。”

    2. 利用现有资源创造新的愿景

    上世纪70年代初，EJ•杰克逊是一名私家侦探，但他扩大业务的梦想却因银行拒绝贷款而宣告破灭。灵光一闪的杰克逊申请了两笔汽车贷款：用一笔钱买下一辆1975年产的林肯，用另一笔钱购买了一辆1975年产的卡迪拉克。1977年，他利用这两部车成立了一家新公司——杰克逊豪华轿车服务公司。

    如今，在明星云集的洛杉矶，他的公司聘用了数百名司机为乘客提供用车服务。杰克逊在电子邮件中表示：“有时候，你必须利用自己现有的资源，去做一些事情。创造一个新的传奇。”

    3. 广告客户也可以成为投资者

    达林•阿尔佩特是加入Find Me Gluten Free团队的第一人。该公司同样位于奥斯丁，提供一种用来寻找无麸质食品餐厅的搜索引擎服务。阿尔佩特和他的团队招揽马克•库班的连锁餐厅Naked Pizza成为他们的广告客户，并且说服他成为公司的投资者。

    阿尔佩特写道：“我们通过无数次电子邮件和一次20分钟的电话，做成了这两笔交易。我们的用户增长到20万名，并在2013年7月以高价将公司出售，获利颇丰。”

    4. 在游乐场得到投资

    阿比•席勒和萨曼莎•库兹曼-康特决定成立一家儿童媒体公司。当孩子们在游乐场玩耍的时候，她们一边向其他家长寻求反馈，一边开发自己的产品。

    这种非正式民意调查引起了几位家长的共鸣，后来，他们成为The Mother Company的投资者。这家位于洛杉矶的公司为孩子们提供各种图书和表演。席勒在电子邮件中表示，The Mother Company在游乐场里获得了50万美元的投资。

    5. 采用众筹方式在自家网站融资

    普利斯卡•迪亚兹曾经天真地以为，在众筹网站Kickstarter上，可以非常轻松地为自己的发明融资75,000美元。她的发明是一款名为Bare的奶瓶，可保证不会有空气进入其中。但她的项目却未能在三个月内获得足够的资金。

    三年后，她决定重新尝试。这一次，她创建了一个网站，通过奶瓶的原型图片介绍自己的理念。这种理念在社交媒体上引起了许多人的关注，有大批潜在客户对正式产品翘首以待。

    她在邮件中表示，她直接在网站上推出了预订系统，并进行了预售，最终为她的公司Bittylab募集了超过50,000美元资金。

    This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. The article below was originally published at Entrepreneur.com.

    So you think your business idea is dead because you can’t find an investor? Most new entrepreneurs feel the same way.

    Through email exchanges with business owners and a few nonprofit founders, I found nine very clever funding stories from founders who made their projects flourish — renegade style.

    1. Seek international sponsorship.

    When Adam Lyons was launching The Zebra, an Austin company offering a Kayak-type search engine for car insurance, he decided to look overseas to find an outfit that had already successfully developed same business model. He found U.K. billionaire Simon Nixon, who had made a fortune with Moneysupermarket.com.

    Lyons offered to become his U.S. partner and Nixon accepted his proposal, Lyons asserts via email.

    “Not everyone may think to search for investors in other emerging markets who have experience with similar business models,” Lyons shares via email. “But for us, it was beyond beneficial.”

    2. Create a new vision with what you have.

    In the early 1970s, EJ Jackson worked as a private investigator but banks rejected his loan application that would have allowed him to expand his business. In a stroke of creative inspiration Jackson took out two car loans: one for a 1975 Lincoln and another for a 1975 Cadillac. In 1977, he used the two cars to launch a new business, Jackson Limo Service.

    Today his Los Angeles-based company employs hundreds of drivers, chauffeuring passengers in that celebrity-studded town. “Sometimes you have to take what you can get and make something out of that,” Jackson shares via email. “Create a new legacy for yourself.”

    3. Advertisers are investors, too.

    Darin Alpert was the first person to join the team of Find Me Gluten Free, a company, also in Austin, offering a search engine to locate gluten-free restaurants. Alpert and his team secured Mark Cuban’s Naked Pizza as an advertiser and then convinced him to become an investor.

    “Both deals were done via numerous emails and one 20 minute phone call,” Alpert writes. “We grew to 2,000,000 users and profitably sold the company in July 2013.”

    4. Make payment arrangements at the playground.

    Abbie Schiller and Samantha Kurtzman-Counter set out to create a children’s media company. While their children amused themselves on the playground, they asked other parents for feedback as they developed their product.

    Their informal polls struck a chord with parents who then became investors in Los Angeles-based The Mother Company, which offers a series of books and shows for children. The Mother Company wound up raising some $500,000 in funds as a result of playground playdates, Schiller asserts via email.

    5. Kickstart yourself.

    Priska Diaz naively thought it would be easy to use Kickstarter to raise $75,000 to produce her invention, a baby bottle called Bare that offers air-free milk. But her project failed to receive funds in three months.

    Three years later she was ready to try again. This time she created a website showing the concept with pictures of bottle prototypes. The concept earned her an extensive social-media following as potential customers awaited the product’s development.

    She set up a system for preordering and hosted a presale directly from a website, raising more than $50,000 for her company Bittylab, she claims in an email.