I'm not referring to operating expenses. I'm referring to investment in growth. The idea is to prove you have a business that can turn a profit by bootstrapping it yourself, then get a small business loan from a bank to take it to the next level.
There are also other sources of business loans. Here's one example:
The idea that VC money is needed to grow a certain type of business simply isn't true. If you're prepared to be patient, you can avoid any VC involvement.
> "But most highly educated people aren't interested in starting a restaurant or mini-mart."
What a bizarre statement. So highly educated people can't be passionate about food?
Also, what I suggested is not limited to expansion through a franchise model. Let's go back to product manufacturing to explore why. Imagine you have just received an initial order of 100,000 units of Product X. You can meet this order with your current supply chain, but in order to cut costs in future orders you'd like to manufacture a greater proportion of the finished product in-house. Let's say for the sake of argument that you've identified potential savings if you can create injection molded cases for Product X. If you go to the bank with a low-risk plan to grow the business, including an analysis of the current health of the company and forecasts of future profits, you can reasonably expect that you can find a bank (or other business loan lender) willing to lend you the money to invest in your company to help it grow.
> "So highly educated people can't be passionate about food?"
What a bizarre deduction. I'm passionate about food, I have no interest in starting my own restaurant.
It was a generalization based on my own observations, most banks lend to safe well-established models, university graduates tend to gravitate towards newer things.
> "I have no interest in starting my own restaurant."
That's your choice of course, but why do you think that is?
> "university graduates tend to gravitate towards newer things."
I don't think that's an accurate generalisation. For people who have STEM degrees, I'd agree, but there are a large proportion of people who followed other degrees (English majors, History majors, Philosophy majors, etc...) where I'd suggest that bias towards the new is not as prominent.
Yes, if you have plenty of receivables, and they're diversified, you can find banks to fund some working capital. But not operating expenses.