Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company—and Revolutionized an Industry

8.2. Play #91: Consider Fundraising Strategies Other Than Venture Capital

In looking for a new way to grow our business, I reached out to my friends and colleagues—people who believed in me and my ideas. This was hardly an unconventional strategy. In the U.S., entrepreneurs provide on average about two-thirds of startup capital and after that look to family, friends, work colleagues, and strangers—not venture capital firms—to provide the remainder of the investment capital. (Of that group, research shows that family and friends provide 78 percent of the total.)^[] Raising capital from private investors is not as simple as knowing people with resources, though. It's pivotal to find people who are visionaries.

I was very fortunate to have friends, ...