The Unusual Way This Startup Found FundingThe Initial connection may not happen in an office. This startup went looking for backers on their own turf.

The challenge:Suman Kanuganti and Yuja Chang knew zero VCs but needed funding for their startup, Aira. It creates internet-connected, camera-equipped glasses for the blind; if a person wearing them needs help navigating somewhere, an on-call sighted person can watch the camera feed and verbally direct the blind person.

The solution:Rather than beg for meetings, the cofounders became active in the blind community, where they hoped to find support. At a fund-raiser for the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) in 2014, they chatted up the evening's speaker, Lux Capital partner Larry Bock. He'd lost most of his vision to macular degeneration. "I was so in awe of the low-profile, inconspicuous but extremely powerful nature of the technology," he says. Soon he provided seed capital and joined as Aira's executive chairman.