Most people treat "not VC-backed" as a consolation prize. Greg Isenberg and Derek Andersen (Startup Grind) make the actual case for why that's backwards. The real numbers: venture funding works for less than 1% of companies created. Of the companies VCs do back, only a small fraction ever return the capital — the model is built around that outcome, not despite it. Derek gets specific about what that looks like from the inside: six engineers at $100K each against $300K in re...