12 articles
In September 1878 Edison told the New York Sun he had solved electric lighting. The working lamp came thirteen months later. The announcement bought investors in three days and a $300,000 company in a month; it also set a deadline he missed by more than a year.
Two centuries before venture capital, Matthew Boulton and James Watt charged mine owners one third of the fuel their engine saved, and counted every stroke to collect it.
McCormick's reaper cut oats in 1831, but he had sold fewer than 100 by the end of 1846. What changed was not the machine alone: a written warranty, pay-after-harvest terms, a factory in Chicago and agents paid on cash collected.
In 1888 George Eastman sold a $25 camera that went back to his factory for developing. The camera was the front end; the product was the service behind it.
Before venture capital existed, Henry Ford lost two car companies within three years, then built a third with a coal dealer, a machine shop that supplied the parts and also bought in, and a checking account that nearly hit zero.
In 1937 Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard postponed the question of what to make. By 1939 they sold a $54.40 audio oscillator from a Palo Alto garage, paid for by $538, a spouse's salary and customer orders.
In 1877 the telephone's backers chose to lease every instrument instead of selling it. What the surviving documents show about that decision, and which famous Western Union stories do not hold up.
In the 1760s and 1770s a Staffordshire potter used a royal order, a London showroom, a printed catalogue, and a partner in town to find his market. His letters show which of these moves he planned, and which popular stories about him do not hold up.
Arkwright funded his spinning mills with partners from his first customer industry, built his own demand when buyers refused his yarn, and sold licences on a patent that the courts later struck down.
Before venture capital, Shibusawa Eiichi helped start companies in Meiji Japan by pooling many investors' money, writing the rules, and standing between rivals. The records show a slower start and a different role than the legend.
An inventor with no money and a lawyer paid in equity turned an expensive, litigated machine into a household purchase, and they did it without outside investors.
In 1895 a top imperial scholar set out to build a cotton mill in Nantong. He could not raise the cash, so he took idle official spinning machines as half of his capital and kept control of the company himself.
