Three well-known, successful Triangle tech entrepreneurs who navigated their ways from startups to successful exits will share their wisdom and experiences about bootstrapping to success tonight at the First Flight Venture Center.

Rich Lee, former CEO of Hosted Solutions; Steve Malik who founded, sound and then reacquired Medfusion, and Mike Shook, former CEO of Strategic technologies, are scheduled to talk about the importance of growing firms without investment capital from outside sources.

“Boostrapping allows companies to maintain focus on building a product and a company vs non-stop fund-raising in the intial stages,” says Gary Hayes, co-founder and chief operating officer of Scale Finance. “This is a crucial step for those who want to maintain control and create better valuations when they do raise money.”

Scale Finance and First Flight Venture Center, a startup incubator and accelerator, are putting on the event which begins at 5 p.m.

The organizers cited data from CB Insights that points out that less than 10 percent of startups raise money from outside investors and 76 percent of private tech firms acquired in 2013 had not raised institutional capital.

Bootstrapping also allows entrepreneurs to maintain control of their companies while forcing founders to be disciplined in spending.

“We feel there is a great need to focus on the ability to self-fund and spend with discipline in the early stages,” isaid Andy Schwab, president of First Flight Venture Center and an active angel investor. “Many of our current and past clients have been self-funded and bootstrapped to a greater valuation by using prudent methods – it’s a key component of our program here at FFVC,” says Schwab.

Tonight’s event is the first in a series.

Interested attendees may register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bootstrapping-advice-from-the-pros-tickets-11419663521