With puppies and kittens, and everyone has rainbow coloured cotton candy whenever they want.

Wake up. You don't get to do any of that when your board is stacked with VCs.

Who says you need to get VC?

First of all JOBS act Title 3 lets you do crowdfunding. And meanwhile there are old school alternatives:

Banks (older school than VC)

Actual profits (probably even older school)

Broker dealers (crowdfunding before there was crowdfunding)

The problem is, Inbox already has a BUNCH of VC's behind it. Which means a lot of people only worried about making money on the board. Unless the founders collectively agree they won't sell the company and also have a majority of shares in the company, the first big tech company that comes knocking with an offer will treated like the second coming.

Yeah, but who needs to be cool when you have a billion dollars?