And there’s another option for startups that don’t want to go public: Forgo VC and angel investments entirely and fund the company with the profits from your business. That organic-growth option may sound quaint, but it can still be quite successful. Indeed, VC funding is by no means necessary to fund a fast-growing company. In 2009 Paul Kedrosky, a Kauffman Foundation senior fellow and venture capitalist, looked at the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing companies in the US for every year between 1997 and 2007—a period that includes the VC boom of 1999-2000. He found about 900 companies in all, of which only 16 percent had VC backing. “Such companies almost certainly could have venture investors, if they wanted them,” Kedrosky wrote in a paper for Kauffman. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the fastest-growing companies decided that they didn’t need VCs.

For High Tech Companies, Going Public Sucks - WIRED

Good food for thought. And here is the quoted study by Paul Kedrosky.