Is it possible to start a new business without an investor?

"Is it possible to start a new business without an investor?"

If you can, that is the best way to do it.

You do not give enough details to provide specific recommendations. But you need to figure out ways to attract partner and customer money/resources.

Think, what is it you would spend investor money on. Say it is people or talent. Think about how you can get partners or customers to contribute people or talent to your project.

For me, investors might bring funding and or expertise to your business, but if you make a realistic appraisal and think you can manage without, that may well be a legitimate decision.

From experience, many businesses fail either because they run out of money, or they lack a sufficient range of skills. Also, limited funds might prevent you expanding or promoting your business at The optimal level.

What does your financial section in your business plan lead you to believe? Generally with a detailed business plan you can answer this question.

There's certainly no requirement to have an investor. If you can launch the product and bootstrap it from revenue then by all means.

There is some risk in that a strategic investor/partner can make things go faster/easier from a growth perspective and speed to market is your main defense against someone taking your idea and developing a similar competitive solution.

Assuming this is for Washery, have you considered approaching one of the larger dry cleaning chains as a strategic partner?

Im reading through these answers. There are some good ones and some less informed, but most are answering with personal bias based on their own experiences. That is a problem that happens in these co founder discussions. If you have written a detailed business plan you will come back with different questions. The question you ask here leads me to believe you do not have a detailed business plan. Otherwise you would know whether you need an investor or not. Then the types of questions you will be asking are: How can I reduce my expenses to avoid taking an investor? or I need to take on an investor, what is a good way to structure? or what are the pros and cons to taking on established investors vs, less institutional angel investors? A business plan is interwoven...all the sections. If you can not tell whether you need an investor or not, very simply you have a business plan that at the very least is lacking in the financial section. Thats ok, but I can also tell you if you can't answer that question on your own, it is very unlikely any investor is going to invest. And the reason I say that is because a savy investor is going to want to know where his dollars are going. If you don't even know whether you need them, that means you don't know where every one of his dollars is going....not a good thing to go into an investor meeting with.

Yes, if you can provide initial money for development an MVP and marketing you can start a business without investor. You can use 3F rule (friends, family, fools) who just believe in your idea. As a plus you'll save equity.

At the other point most of the angel are not ready to invest money in a company without prototype and traction.

So use your resources and get the investor after you get an MVP. This will help to save equity of your startup

Short answer: no. Most business don't have investors. You could get a personal loan from a bank. You could save $100 / paycheck for a couple months. Or... you could just start doing your business. Sell your service. Make money. When you have no time left, hire someone. Rinse & repeat.

Startups get investors when they need a lot of cash soon, like to develop new technology, to pivot from a competitor or outpace them, or to buy a competitor. You could do a web search to learn more too.

Yes, it's certainly possible to launch a startup and even make an exit without investors. It's called bootstrapping.

However, statistically, having investors increases the chances of an exit, as well as the size of an exit, by hundreds of percents.

Whenever possible, the best scenario is to get an investment, but only at the right time - after the product and the business model had been fully validated (i.e. product exists and is profitable on a small, but representative scale) and you are planning to start growing at an explosive rate by simply scaling up the existing product. An investment can really help you grow fast under these circumstances (also it's relatively easy to find an investor at such a point).

An accelerator, however, is something completely different. It's not an investor in any meaningful sense, and these days many accelerators don't even give any money. Accelerators can help in other ways. If you're a beginner and you don't really know what to do next, accelerators may be able to help you. But that's a different question.