Of course on a board owned by Ycombinator this is not the most common opinion, but VCs are not the only way to a successful company. Loans, public funding (nati

Of course on a board owned by Ycombinator this is not the most common opinion, but VCs are not the only way to a successful company. Loans, public funding (national and international), crowdfunding, are all options. You can also produce on demand and have a slightly higher price. For things like malaria treatments, there are tons of international funds, public and private. I mean, one of the biggest, the Gates foundation, has plenty of funds for this kind of programs. Also, a lot of people overestimate the cost of outsourcing manufacturing. A few plane tickets and a few weeks of hostel in Shenzhen with the good people will put you on track to manufacture many devices and probably enough for the 1.0 version that you will sell in a volume of mere thousands. You don't need millions of dollars and volumes of millions. Not anymore.