In October, as startup Jaxtr hit up venture capital firms for its first round of funding, it landed an unusual arrangement. Instead of taking a few million in cash from a firm that would hope to one day book a fat return, Jaxtr took a loan, just $1.5 million, from no less than four VC firms and three angel investors. None got the usual perk of a seat on Jaxtr’s board. The result is plenty of independence for Jaxtr, a maker of software that routes calls from blogs and MySpace profiles to cell phones. “You’re still basically on your own,” says Jaxtr Chief Executive Konstantin Guericke, one of the co-founders of networking site LinkedIn.
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