They mention Mondragon in the past tense but the organization is still alive and growing.

The bank mentioned still kind of exist, after several mergers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboral_Kutxa

On a side note, you will find a lot of the names around Mondragon do not have a spanish-sounding name. That’s because this from the Basque country, whose language is pretty disconnected from its neighbors as it is suspected to be one of the only remnants of a pre-indo-european language (end of the linguisitic geek parenthesis)

Generally speaking, the problem people face with loans vs investors is that bank loans are harder to get and are usually far more risk-adverse. In the startup-crazed scene, investors are seeing their funds as bet money. They are uninterested in 10% return, they prefer a “go big or go bust” attitude. They target different projects.

Startups have tended to dominate all the talks about entrepreneurship and funding, but regular small scale, small growth or even no-growth companies are still out there.