For Girish Navani and his four partners, raising venture capital was never an option when they started medical software company eClinicalWorks at the height of the dot-com boom.

At a time when startups were chasing the generous riches of venture capitalists, the founders of Westborough, Mass.-based eClincalWorks made a conscious decision to keep their full-time jobs and sell off investments for seed money.

“We wanted to be a long-term company versus a quick success story,” said Navani, chief executive and co-founder of eClinicalWorks. “The goals of venture capitalists are not necessarily to build a company that lasts 15 or 25 years.”

Today eClinicalWorks has close to 700 employees, and is projecting $80 million to $85 million in sales for the year with zero debt--a far cry from the five employees it had back in March of 1999.

eClinicalWorks may seem like an anomaly, but some startups are shunning venture-capital investments, choosing to go it alone, even if it means success and profitability will be a bit farther down the road.

For some, the capital requirements aren’t as necessary, and for others--veterans of the dot-com boom and bust--seeing companies implode only after a few months have made them reluctant to deal with VCs. All agree the time frame in which VCs want to cash out is a main reason they have opted out, even if venture capitalists are knocking on their doors.

“I had worked previously as a VP of marketing at two Internet companies and watched them both go bankrupt. In both cases they received venture funding, and in both cases they bit off way more than they could chew,” said Maia Haag, president of I See Me Inc. the Cannon Falls, Minn., maker and seller of personalized children’s books and gifts, which refused VC funding. “They were under pressure from VCs to generate a lot of revenue very quickly…to the point they didn’t refine and set plans adequately.”

Haag didn’t want to end up a statistic, so when she started her company, she used her own money and found ways to conduct business on the cheap. For instance, since Haag didn’t have the capital to purchase equipment to publish the books, she found an outsourcer which she still uses today.

“It took longer to grow than it would have had we had a lot of capital right upfront…but in the end we are a stronger company because we refined our product, our marketing strategy and distribution,” said Haag, noting that I See Me has been profitable for three years.

Frank Zamani, founder of Caspio, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that sells a database program that enables companies to create Web applications has found unique ways to keep costs down in lieu of tapping VC financing. Since Caspio didn’t have the cash to build a sales team, it made its Web site a self-service portal full of information. The company also fine-tuned it process of converting leads of visitors into trials and incentivize customers to pay quarterly or annually so that Caspio can have access to capital. 

“We don’t borrow any money, we don’t lease any equipment. Everything we spend is with money we already have,” said Zamani.

While the lure of raising millions of dollars in seed money from venture capitalists oftentimes is hard to resist, entrepreneurs have to think long and hard before they jump in head-first, said Heidi Roizen, a former managing director of Mobius Venture Capital, a technology VC company with $2 billion under management--and now, founder of SkinnySongs.

“The fundamental thing everyone has to understand is with VC is, you're taking on a partner,” that will some day find an exit, said Roizen. In general, when taking capital from a VC, the VC gets preferred shares in the company, which means they get their money before the entrepreneur. 

“Money trumps sweat equity--always,” said Roizen.

Not to mention the entrepreneur has to give up a lot of control when taking on VC funding. Even the founder or CEO can be fired by the VC and board.  One of the biggest mistakes is start-ups “take the money first and realize they just married somebody,” said Roizen.

For the founders of eClinicalWorks, the idea of taking on any investments--whether it’s from VCs or via an initial public offering--is a moot point. While eClincalWorks gets calls on a weekly basis from would-be investors, the company’s executives have resisted, and will continue to resist, the temptation.

“I don’t think we would be here today,” if the company went the VC route, said Navani, adding that the company would likely have been pushed for an exit at $25 million or $30 million in sales.