Very comfortable - very comfortable - priority cosmetic bag filling there will be decorative cosmetics.

But this is not a guarantee that despite the fact that you are not very fond of makeup and decorative, you will not receive cosmetics 100% only from it. Ipsi can always argue this by saying that we are trying for you so that you try something new :)

If you are not from the USA and order a cosmetic bag through intermediaries stage, you need to make sure a little bit. The thing is, if you use services of air carriers, we must remember that it is impossible to transport by plane a range of cosmetic products such as pressure sprays, nail polishes, perfumes (a full list of prohibited items can be found in the FAQ of your mail forwarder).

If there is a prohibited item in your package, then with a high degree of probability, it can be disposed of, sent back, in general, you may not get all parcel.

There is such a mail forwarder, such as Pesoto , by contacting the support service which, you can ask them to open your package and remove the forbidden to transport the product.

Or you can hope for luck, cross your fingers and wait for the package "slip through".

Or use the services of intermediaries that carry by sea. There are no restrictions on cosmetics, but usually delivery costs a little more and the departure is noticeably longer.

A big plus is that the user has a time gap between revealing the contents of the cosmetic bag and sending it, and if in your cosmetic bag cosmetics that are better to carry by sea, then you can quickly change delivery address by choosing another mail forwarder, but you need to do this immediately after disclosure of filling and do not pull until the last.

But to reduce the chance of getting a ban, you need to check the points about nail polishes, perfumes, as well as styling products like those that you want to receive rarely:

or spirits. Although I have always had these items rarely, I received for the 2nd month and varnish and perfume.

All other items related to cosmetics, mark as you wish, but there is one caveat. If you noted that you want to receive highlighters rarely, this is does not mean that you will not be sent 4 highlighters in a row. Or 4 carcasses in a row, even if you noted that you want to receive them rarely. Ipsi's argument - well, we say you we encourage the use of different cosmetics, you can’t argue with FIG, although it seems to be service personalized.

Next comes preference for cosmetic shades. And here, too, everything is difficult. At least me and it’s worth that I don’t want to get nude colors, but I want all sorts of bright and cool, but they stubbornly send me nudes, especially when it comes to the shadows of odnushki. Among the ipsters, even a meme is already going around about the "golden shadows" that send Literally everyone all the time.

I didn't mention anything at all in a separate paragraph concerning perfumes. Again, if you use the services of a maritime intermediary, you can choose anything at all) All these restrictions apply only to air.

At this point, you can safely pretend to be a resident of the States))

Among other things, you will be asked what skin problems you would like to solve.

The next item is about hair, and if you don't want to be sent styling products that may come in pressurized bottles are best not mark the item Needs Volume. I have selected the "safe" items that concern hair care in the form of masks, conditioners and other cool stuff.

This is the last item of the questionnaire, then you will need to confirm your e-mail and age.

Next, choose a subscription. Now new subscribers can choose either the regular cosmetic bag, or Plus, or the option to receive both of them.

In the address field, enter the one that is in your personal account on the reseller's website.

Next will be the card binding point and there are two options here - simple and the one with which most people have problems with. This is the payment for the first cosmetic bag. The problem is that Ipsi is not very willing to accept Ukrainian cards (which As for other countries, I do not know exactly the situation). The simplest option is immediately connect PayPal. I did and I didn't have any problems. write-off went through immediately.

But the girls who connected the cards faced a refusal. If you want to pay by card, you can try to do this by turning on the VPN and selecting the country USA. True, and then not always any card passes. Someone is lucky with Privat card, someone with a Monobank card.

But the good thing about all this is that the VPN operation will only need to be done once, and then the withdrawal will take place without problems and any participation from your sides. Don't forget to disable double conversion on your card if it doesn't work. in dollars.

Everyone! As soon as the money has been debited, you will receive a notification by mail, and you waiting for your makeup. At first, it will take several days to collect it, and then you show the content. Shipping within the USA is free, but to your country you need will be delivered by intermediaries.

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✅ How to get Ipsy outside the USA.

We make delivery on the example of delivery to Ukraine And here is an intriguing moment, in personal, you saw that your package is on the way. I would advise you to check office, as a letter about the fact that the cosmetic bag was sent is sent or already when the parcel may be delivered, or may not be sent at all.

It must be registered in your mail forwarder's Personal Account. showing on the example of NP Shopping, other intermediaries will have a similar procedure. Follow the link Track Glam Bag. Your cosmetic bag can be delivered across the States different companies, Fedex, DHL, etc.

We need this long number. Copy it and go to your personal account intermediary. We copy the code into the appropriate field and move on:

Fill in the necessary data and indicate the exact cost of the cosmetic bag + additions, if any. So that in case of loss of the parcel, the intermediary company reimbursed you in full.

We indicate the data for delivery by country:

And that's it, your shipment is registered:

Further, the speed and quality of delivery depends only on the intermediary.

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✅ What is ultra-personalization from Ipsy Glam Bag Plus?

In May 2020, Ipsy changed the rules of the game in the world of beat services by introducing ultra-personalization. Now every plan subscriber Ipsy Glam Bag Plus can choose 3 products on his own discretion!

Choice opens on the 2nd and closes on the 3rd, and the subscriber is offered 3 collections of cosmetics, and from each collection he can choose 1 product.

First, the service shows what cosmetics he picked for us himself, and these are two position, and then the subscriber chooses what he will receive.

Subscribers really liked this move, as there is a feeling of more control, although, obviously, the selections may not be the most ideal :) But I I have received 2 of these so far and I am quite happy with them. filling.

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At any time, service subscribers can easily pause their subscription or refuse it altogether. You can do this in your personal account. When you pause makeup, you skip the next month and get a new one cosmetics in a month.

How to cancel a subscription is described in detail in the FAQ at the link help.ipsy.com

I myself have not unsubscribed from the service yet. I don't cancel subscriptions, but I just pause the usual cosmetic bag, then the plus, depending on what I want to get next month.

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On the 2nd you will see the contents of your cosmetic bag. And 2-3 of each month, you will have a chance to add something to your cosmetic bag at a nice price. These addons (additions) will come to you along with your cosmetic bag.

Prices vary, assortment is different every time, but here are screenshots with examples what can be bought. Addons usually have very low prices and a pleasant experience. choice. So serum for 98 dollars in Sephora, you can smoke here for 18.

attractive prices and interesting products there come across.

Chance Add-Ons, and the add-on store reopens for a few days, but what you buy during this period will come separately from the cosmetic bag.

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In addition to add-ons, Ipsi has a store on a permanent basis where they also sell "junk" All sorts of kits and cosmetics are sold at prices. Sometimes there are very interesting offers, or exclusive cosmetic bags.

Such orders arrive separately from the cosmetic bag.

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Each Ipsy subscriber can collect points that he can then spend for cosmetics from the special Points section.

Points can be collected when you write reviews about the received cosmetics. It is necessary done by the end of this month. For 1 reviewed product they give 15 points.

You can also get 600 bonus points for inviting a friend to the program referral code. From time to time Ipsy sends to its subscribers 3 invitations for a free cosmetic bag. Thus, the benefit is double, you give your friend the first free cosmetic bag, and you yourself get 600 points to your account.

And once a month, Ipsi distributes 1800 points at once, for a limited the amount of time for inviting a friend, while uploading some kind of an interesting product that you can spend these bonuses on:

Products purchased for points usually come in the next cosmetic bag, and nowhere are not displayed.

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A very big problem with Ipsi is that sometimes they "drive" and send you often what you would not like to receive at all. For example, one by one they send you highlighters, black eyeliners, golden shadows, nail polishes or perfumes, and this is for you not interesting at all.

Now when filling out the questionnaire there is no "Do not send" item, which was a couple of years back, and apparently at some point in time this caused a big the number of complaints. Therefore, apparently, in test mode, it was launched category control option. To my great regret, not everyone has it, so check it in person in your office. You can find it in the Glam settings Bag:

By going to it, you can completely unsubscribe from as many as 3 categories products. I unsubscribed from nail polishes, perfumes and products for styling.

It's been half a year since the unsubscribe from these categories, I do not come across them. But I met reviews of girls who still came across products, from mailings of which they completely refused. So this is serious reinsurance, but not a 100% guarantee. You can also write to support Ipsy ask them to manually unsubscribe you from uninteresting products mode.

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Contact Ipsy support immediately https://help.ipsy.com/

You can find the answer to your question there or contact Ipsy directly. There are usually three scenarios for the development of events, either you for unreceived or erroneous goods are awarded points, or the goods are sent to you separately free of charge, or return the money if the entire cosmetic bag was lost or purchase.

The most unprofitable option is if you are sent one item separately If this is acceptable for the residents of the State, then contact intermediaries for the sake of some miniature and I don’t want to spend money on it.

When I received a gloss in the wrong shade, I wrote to the support team, and I got 600 bonus points.

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cosmetic bags, especially in the Plus plan, cosmetics of "home" brands are often added, or cosmetics that are made specifically for Ipsy at factories in China.

So, for example, Colored Raine and Ofra cosmetics that come across in Ypsi is not made in the USA as their main products, but in China, sometimes in a very packages that are distinct from the main lines. Serums 111Skin also come across Chinese, and some GOLDFADEN MD products are presented in very strange options. For example, I received the GOLDFADEN MD Brightening Elixir serum Protect + Repair Brightening Serum, so there are 2 versions of this on the net serums, one with a really cool composition, and the second option is pure a dummy on the water, and so in cosmetics it is this second option.

So it turns out that they sent you expensive cosmetics, but it seems to be garbage some irrelevant. But the good news is that this does not apply to all cosmetics. Quite often, brands "throw off" Ipsi's old collections.

And among the brands there are a lot of very expensive ones, but few people talk about them I heard such "semi-home" Ipsy brands that greatly raise the price cosmetic bags, but in fact no one will buy them separately.

Fortunately, no matter how much I follow Ipsi on social networks, I never there were reports of delay, although, too, I will not beat myself with a slipper in the chest, everything can be.

So I can't say that Ipsy is cheating his subscribers, but sometimes they can questions will appear.

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All the same, they love Ipsi not in vain, although there are enough minuses, but in fact I don’t know not a single very popular beauty subscription service, to which there would be questions.

One of the good things about Ipsi is the feeling of a holiday and gifts under everyone's pillow month, interesting products that we cannot find, curiosity you also came across a comparison of filling your cosmetic bag with cosmetic bags others.

Ipsi store often pleases with excellent cosmetics for very low money and many girls often shop there.

And besides, the service is constantly growing and developing, and just recently it absorbed another American very popular beauty service Boxycharm and that's it subscribers hope for serious positive changes. I am writing this post a couple of weeks, and news and events appear constantly)

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So, I tried to describe all the nuances of Ipsy as detailed as possible, and now let's talk about whether it's worth signing up at all and messing around with intermediaries, payments and currency fluctuations.

If we talk about the ratio of price and filling of a regular Ipsy Glam Bag, then the service declares that the filling of the basic cosmetic bag will be at least the amount $50 which is actually wrong in 95% of cases. Objectively maximum cost filling is 30 dollars. And most often the cost is just tight corresponds to the cost of a cosmetic bag + shipping. And there are months when in your the bag will not come in a single full size, but only miniatures, which it's not really possible to calculate.

Most often in full size in ordinary cosmetics come makeup brushes, lipsticks, glosses, eyeliners, lip balms.

Care is always represented by miniatures, but there are a lot of such miniatures leaving the luxury segment.

On the other hand, miniatures of decorative cosmetics are most often presented in very good volumes and nice packaging. So the real benefit when ordering Ipsy Glam Bag to another country is very ghostly, and that's what it comes out to be.

Check out Ipsy Glam Bag Plus. Here is the real benefit. Even with strange overpriced "home" brands, benefit even taking into account delivery to your country will be at least triple as you get 5 full sizes and among there are many expensive brands.

Although in fact there are those who believe that it makes no sense to order a regular a cosmetic bag, and those who do not like it Plus, it's only a matter of personal preferences.

It seemed to me that Ipsy and other American services are a little more popular in Ukraine than in Russia. Probably because we have no competitors. There is several beauty subscription services, but they are such that hug and cry, completely unimpressive, insanely boring, and often much more expensive than them should have been. While Russia has many interesting services there is no point in subscribing and fooling around with ordering a box from overseas.

I love Ypsi. They have created an entire ecosystem, skillfully playing with expectations subscribers periodically rolling out spoilers of future content, constantly develop and introduce something new. It is interesting, intriguing, addictive :)

For me, Ipsy is a small piece of joy, waiting for a cosmetic bag, unpacking, testing. Therefore, order it or not, it's up to you decide, but I tried to tell as much as possible)

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This is such a great post, I hope it was useful for you)

Add to bookmarks ask in the comments if you have any questions) I will try to help promptly)

My referral link for registration. in Ipsy

https://www.ipsy.com/jvlgcanf

Thanks to everyone who uses it ♥

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And that's all, as usual, I won't say goodbye for a long time :)

Pa-Pa!

50 successful companies that started a business without large third-party investments - Stories on vc.ru

A selection from the director of the Founder Collective, Joseph Flaherty.

80 687 views

There is an opinion among startup founders that venture investments are the key to success. Yes, they serve as a common measure for many successful technology companies, but they are not at all necessary, especially in the early stages of development.

Entrepreneurs achieve a lot without capital, which, by the way, does not make them any more insightful. If someone can't smartly turn $1 into $10, don't think they can multiply a million.

To show how companies have worked and continue to work without initial funding, I have compiled a list of 50 examples where they spent several thousand to start up or just had to work hard.

Yes, a large proportion of startups from the list still attracted funding, but only when they proved that success would not depend on the investor's bank transfer. Some of the companies mentioned are still not the most famous - they are the invisible "unicorns" of the technology industry.

Attracting investment should be a conscious choice, not an impulsive desire. So, the firms described below show how to succeed, acting contrary to established opinion.

First decision, then money

You don't need an investment to get started if you can solve a client's pressing problem and charge for it. There are three ways:

• workflow automation;
• capital saving product;
• solving an old problem in a new way.

Workflow Automation

The easiest way to create a useful product is to automate part of the routine. This will give you stable demand and an initial source of funding.

In 2000, CEO Ben Chestnut was running a design consulting studio, and many clients were interested in their own email marketing. But there was one problem - Ben could not stand them. Therefore, in order to free the team from boring work, he decided to create a tool that would simplify this process. This is how MailChimp was born, which is now valued at $400 million.

MailChimp co-founder and CEO Ben Chestnut Photo: cnbc. com

In the late 1990s, Linda Weinman taught web design, but the books she recommended to her students were boring and unmemorable. So she started making educational videos. Weinman spent 20 years building a library that has grown to the point of attracting the attention of Linkedin, which paid $1.5 billion for Lynda.com.

PluralSight also offers online programming lessons. For nine years, the platform has been developing without investors: today, PluralSight has 6,000 courses from C # to Javascript, and its value has reached $1 billion since going public.

Capital saving product

Instead of competing with a company like Apple, these start-ups filled the gap left by RadioShack, a chain of electrical stores, and grew into multi-billion dollar companies worthy of emulation.

AdaFruit Flora board that can be worn as a pendant Retrieved

Limor Freed founded AdaFruit Industries while still an MIT student, assembling kits from commercially available radio components. Nevertheless, Freed not only resold them, but also came up with wonderful devices like a replica of the Space Invaders slot machine. Today, the company employs 85 people and generates $33 million in annual sales revenue.

Sparkfun Inventor's Kit

Like Freed, Nathan Seidl started Sparkfun in his dorm, selling electronics kits and rare parts to engineers who wanted to get to know little-known new things. Today, Sparkfun employs over 150 people and generates $32 million in annual revenue.

Solving an old problem in a new way

Sometimes, to get a multi-billion dollar company, it is enough to solve an old problem with new developments or a user interface.

The founders of Shopify were looking for a shopping cart solution when they were setting up their own snowboarding site. Having found nothing, they decided to develop their application based on the popular Ruby on Rails framework.

It turned out to be a great fit for many others, and the founders ran the business independently for six years. In the end, they attracted investments and entered the stock exchange. At the time of writing, Shopify's capitalization was $14 billion.

Secure online money transfers are one of the Internet's oldest problems. Braintree Payments was able to create a successful technical solution, a kind of toolbox for sellers and buyers. The company supported its activities for four years relying only on transaction fees, but ended up raising $69 million in two rounds. In 2013, Paypal took over the platform for $800 million.

For the cause

Many entrepreneurs waste their time "playing directors". The best do not dream, but think about how best to use the available resources.

Products SimpliSafe

Many people laugh at attempts to start production of equipment from scratch, without investment. But SimpliSafe CEO Chad Laurence succeeded. He borrowed money from friends and family and started a no-install security company, soldering early prototypes himself to save money. In eight years, the company has attracted hundreds of thousands of customers, earned hundreds of millions, and received $57 million from Sequoia Capital.

One of the Ipsy

Birchbox started sending out the first box of makeup samples, but YouTube star Michelle Phan has turned her online fame of more than 8 million subscribers into a phenomenon. The girl's audience and connections with cosmetic brands allowed her to found Ipsy, reach $150 million in revenue and raise $100 million in funding.

John Oringer was a professional software developer and an amateur photographer. Combining his passions, he launched the stock photography platform ShutterStock, uploading 30,000 images from his personal library. The firm is currently valued at $2 billion.

While not the biggest company on the list, Quizlet is notable for being founded by a fifteen-year-old who wanted to do well in a French exam. In 2012, when Quizlet raised its first investment, the CEO was 22, the platform was used by 40 million people, and it was one of the fifty most visited sites in the United States.

Skyscanner's original flight search engine was a simple spreadsheet that the founder, an avid skier, used to find the most affordable flights. Skyscanner raised its first investment, $6 million, in 2007, six years after its launch. Another $192 million were invested in the platform in 2016. Today Skyscanner is Edinburgh's premier technology firm with over 500 employees.

Any money is good

Financing does not always bring millions at once. Founders can scrape together money from grants, incubators, business angels, and even presales. The most savvy build a business model that allows you to receive payments even before the release of the product. Thus, clients turn into a source of capital increase.

The history of CoolMiniOrNot began with a site of the same name, where fans could boast of the ability to color figures from Dungeons and Dragons. After a while, the founders decided to invent and sell games on their own, using Kickstarter as a source of investment. They ran 21 campaigns, raising over $20 million.

Who says blogging doesn't pay off? Founded by a former Gizmondo editor, Wirecutter promised more in-depth and honest reviews on a wide variety of products. In 2016, the site was sold to The New York Times for $30 million.

Selling!

Clients are often the best source of funding; selling has two advantages: first, you immediately have money, and secondly, you quickly understand what resonates with the client, and you can fine-tune the offer.

Bars RXBar Wired

When one of the founders of RXBar shared his ambitious plans with his father, he advised him to quickly get to work: "Shut up and sell a thousand bars." That admonishment and $10,000 in savings turned into $600 million, which was used to buy the startup Kellogg, a breakfast cereal maker.

Vertical integration digital brands are popular, but they rely too much on sugary Facebook videos and ads to make money. Scentsy, on the other hand, sold candles at a flea market, since there was no money for advertising. This gave the founders a solid footing, customer knowledge, and Scentsy now generates $545 million in annual revenue.

LootCrate sells pop culture related merch by subscription. Part of the platform's success is due to the fact that sales began in the first weekend of its existence: raising funds for the first time, LootCrate earned up to $100 million and served 600,000 customers.

The founders of Klaviyo agreed that the first employee would be hired only when the company's average revenue reached $1 million. Thanks to its responsive design and strong sales, the email marketing platform quickly passed this bar and did not approach investors for another three years.

Shark Tank judge Sarah Blakely turned $5,000 into a company that makes up to $400 million a year. Spanx makes modeling underwear, and even Oprah Winfrey approved Blakely's products. The sense of style of the entrepreneur attracted clients, and a sober attitude towards money made her a billionaire.

Despite rival Tuft and Needle raising 3,994,900% more investment, this mattress maker was able to achieve $100 million in sales using only profits and $6,000 in seed investment.

Turf & Needle Mattresses are shipped rolled in large boxes

Spell checker has been working in Word and Google Docs for years, but Grammarly has improved it so much that thousands of writers and more than 800 universities pay to use the system. Only ten years after its founding, the company held the first investment round and raised $110 million.

Stingy marketing

Startups shouldn't waste their time on immeasurable brand marketing. Effective entrepreneurs need catchy, immediate campaigns.

ButcherBox, despite market challenges, has been successful and earns $1 million a week by bypassing expensive advertising channels, instead building strong and effective relationships with influencers.

The Cards Against Humanity team was able to raise $12 million in its first year after raising only $15,700 on Kickstarter. In addition, she managed to support the development of the brand with clever promotional stunts like selling bull dung, destroying a Picasso painting, or digging a big hole.

Yes, these ads aren't cheap, but the company made enough money to cover the costs, while also getting a lot of media coverage. And on Black Friday, the guys just asked for money!

Viral marketing is rightly overlooked when it's built on top of a business model, but it can still provide a powerful boost when properly integrated into a product. Together with extremely effective conversion optimization, this method proves to be unbeatable. So, the founders of GoFundMe managed to do something similar and increase the platform’s valuation to $600 million.

Efficiency over investment

It's not uncommon for startups to be compared on the basis of the amount of funds raised, but it's much more important to take into account how they spend their money. The best entrepreneurs build their businesses on technologies or models that are inherently more efficient at generating capital.

For $299 you can visit three races

Former commando Will Dean, with $7,000 in savings at his disposal, turned Tough Mudder into a $100 million company.

Create a community

Technology is undoubtedly important, as is the business model, but a group of dedicated users can be even more important.

Basecamp founder Jason Freed does not disclose earnings, but claims that "every year it brings in tens of millions." The team has also been one of the first to promote the ideas of capital efficiency, and its “Bootstrapped, Profitable, and Proud” series of notes is a must-read for anyone who wants to spend every dollar wisely.

The Mojang craftsmen who created Minecraft never received any investment, hired only 50 employees, and made almost a billion by the time Microsoft bought the game for $2.5 billion. The Swedish studio has never been involved in social spam or microtransaction adventures. Instead, Minecraft was sold at a fixed price, which led to a successful merger.

Behance founder Scott Belsky built the community on his own for five years when he received $6.5 million from Union Square Ventures and ultimately sold the platform for $150 million.

Established in 2004, Thrillist, a food review platform built from mailing list to mailing list, raised $54 million in 2015 alone.

Craigslist took advantage of an early start during the first dot-com boom and turned it into a long-term advantage. Although the company only employs 40 people and hasn't updated its design for a couple of decades, Craigslist is the 17th most visited site in the US and generates hundreds of millions a year, according to Forbes.

Dating site Plenty of Fish was born in 2003 and hasn't changed much in ten years. The main resource of the site, by analogy with Craigslist, was the reputation of a well-stocked pond. In 2015, the company was sold for $575 million

Fortune smiles at the "boring"

Many of the most successful and impressive companies that have managed to grow without third-party investments are solving pressing, but sometimes simple problems, making good money from the very beginning.

• SurveyMonkey was born during the dot-com bubble in the 1990s. And while the platform wasn't as disruptive as, say, Kosmo, it proved to be resilient. The bubble burst, and the value of SurveyMonkey gradually rose to $2 billion. The company received its first investment of $100 million only 11 years after the launch.
• Startup Protolabs, which makes parts on demand, is valued at $1.2 billion today.
• $1.65 billion Cvent develops event management tools and supports Textura, a construction business application that Oracle acquired for $663 million, neither of which are considered hot markets.
• Grasshopper, an IP telephony company, was acquired by Citrix. At the same time, the virtual operator independently attracted 150,000 customers, earning up to $30 million a year.
• eClinicalWorks was founded in 1999 when "grow fast" was the mantra. Many platform rivals burned out; the company, by focusing on the boring but lucrative business of hospital data, survived. Today, eClinicalWorks employs over 4,000 people and generates $320 million in annual revenue.
• Zoho: 4,000 employees, 18 million customers, $300 million in revenue. Not bad for a startup that has challenged Oracle and Salesforce.
• Connecticut's only unicorn, Data Storage Datto was founded in 2007 on a credit card.
• $10,000 was spent on launching InsideSales.com. Today, the sales AI services firm employs 570 people and has had almost $250 million invested since 2012.
• JetBrains, the Prague-based developer of the leading IDE for Java and the Kotlin language, serves 230,000 customers and ranked 431 on the Fortune 500 list without raising funds.
• The Unity game engine, which has become a mainstay of the mobile gaming industry, has taken over all the unremarkable aspects of development such as cross-platform compatibility and bump texturing. For many years, Unity existed independently; it is currently valued at $1.5 billion.
• GitHub has taken the pain out of version control and, even before attracting the attention of investors, has become a critical part of the technology ecosystem.
• Qualtrics was originally designed as a survey tool for schools and businesses, but it was developed in the basement. Now the company employs a thousand people, and its annual income is $100 million.
• Corporate training videos are notoriously boring. Even more boring can only be a startup that creates them. However, Wistia has 300,000 customers, including Starbucks, Cirque Du Soleil and Casper.

Investments can always be raised later

By delaying fundraising, you can get incredible returns.

Wayfair founders Neeraj Shah and Steve Konin Cornell Chronicle

Wayfair, an online store selling household goods, made a profit in the first month of operation and grew steadily, bringing money, for another ten years - only then was the first round brought to the company $ 160 million. Wayfair soon went public. The company is now worth $8 billion, and since there was no investment split, each of the founders owns more than a billionth share.

"We didn't have big ambitions, we just wanted to support our income," Ian Siegel, head of Zip Recrutier, told Forbes. Meanwhile, the platform became popular and the founders had to arm themselves with bigger ambitions, for which they led an investment round, raising $63 million. The firm raised $64 million in 2015. While it recently had to tighten its belts by cutting some of its staff, Nerdwallet is now valued at $500 million with over $100 million in annual revenue.

Imaginary bad luck

By opening a business where there are few start-ups and, therefore, little venture capital investment, you can get an advantage: entrepreneurs, instead of dreaming about financing, are forced to satisfy the needs of customers.

The Australian company Atlassian achieved a multi-billion dollar capitalization on its own. Had it had easy access to investment, the team could have pursued low-quality growth and gone bankrupt.

When the first investment round is more like an IPO, one can judge the effectiveness of the leaders with confidence. A similar thing happened to Campaign Monitor, another Australian firm; she does email analytics. Its services are used by Disney, Coca-Cola and Buzzfeed.

Despite the fact that Jeff Green, the founder of The Trade Desk platform, had his own view on programmatic advertising, he founded the company much later than his competitors. The overheating of the market, the loss of money by investors made each round of financing very difficult. Yet Greene, who raised only $26.4 million in The Trade Desk's first six years of operation, managed to turn it into a billion-dollar NASDAQ-traded business.

Adam Foroi, founder of AppLovin, a mobile marketing platform, says: "I couldn't find an investor who would invest $4-5 million, but by the end of the first year of operation, we became profitable, reaching $1 million per month. "

On the surface

Surprisingly, the companies listed above make up only a small fraction of capital efficient firms, and there are many such examples. Many examples can be found among middle-aged or narrowly focused enterprises:

• Mathworks and Wolfram Research employ thousands of people, but it is hardly possible to replicate their success without the Fields Medal.
• ESRI and Bose are also efficient companies, but they are already 60 years old.
• Autodesk, a major developer of CAD tools, is now valued at $27 billion, while the company was founded in 1982 with a budget of $60,000. Interestingly, taking into account inflation, this amount is equal to $150,000 - not much more than Y Combinator invests.
• Microsoft is arguably the most impressive start-up that didn't raise money early on.
• The success of Valve, whose founders made their fortune on the wave of Microsoft's success, is also not easy to repeat.

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