Credit still trumps venture capital when it comes to financing.

Question: Do businesses really want venture capital?

Clifford Schorer: Well, I guess my opinion would be a VC place is probably not the first place you'd go. That's pretty rare that a VC company, especially right now, will step in and fund a company that has no organization, no revenue stream, no hard product. The reality of it is most businesses are financed — believe it or not — on credit cards and that's still the case. That's still the biggest funding source we know of. And then there is a level of friends and family where you bring in people close to you for small investments to get you started, get some traction. Then you can go to people like VCs and show that you've got a proven model and you can take it to heights where they get a real return.

Recorded on: 5/13/08