ON A RAINY DAY in October, Van Dyke shows up to address dozens of venture capitalists assembled at a Hilton Hotel in Portland for Venture Northwest, a forum for entrepreneurs interested in reaching many potential backers at once. Unfortunately, Van Dyke already talked to—and got shot down by—most of the invited VCs. But he's arrived with fresh energy and a strange urge to tell these folks that he needs them about as much as they apparently need him.

Just days ago, he had an epiphany. "I was trying so hard to fit a model that I lost sight of what I had," Van Dyke will tell me later. "Our Web site, our product, our team, our infrastructure—let someone else try to reproduce all that for $14 million. Those elements are exactly why people should invest in us."

When he takes the stage at Venture Northwest, Van Dyke skips the PowerPoint and wings it with a speech he's written on index cards, "The Top 10 Reasons Why You Don't Want to Invest in My Company." It's a jab at the people who've refused him.

"You could've heard a pin drop," Van Dyke will recall later. After reading from the cards—which include reasons like "Executive compensation is limited to 12 times payment of the lowest employee"—Van Dyke flings them into the audience.

Soon he's back in his office, calling people who've already put money in, investors who understand Nau's virtues and warts and still feel the magic. Within days, he'll get new commitments from investors like Luczo that total $10 million, and he's confident another $7 million will soon follow.

"I spent close to 20 months beating my head against the wall, and if I'd only thought about it and not been so naïve, I would've realized the financing world is not designed to respond to our business," Van Dyke says. "Now I know that Nau is going to happen."

Around the same time comes other good news. Nau has nailed down solid commitments from landlords in four cities. The first Nau store is slated to open in January in Boulder, in a retail district called Twenty Ninth Street; the others will open by April. Yes, three of those stores will be in mall-type settings, but Nau's designers still have plenty of reason to be cheerful: The PLA fabric they've gambled on came out of the factory mill exactly right. The corn-based clothes will be in the company's debut lineup.

As this issue hits stands, Nau has been up and running only a matter of days. No doubt there are myriad questions swirling through Van Dyke's head: Are the stores going to be ready on time? Will the charities receive their donations? Where am I going to come up with another $26 million? But, believe it or not, he's grappling with even bigger issues.

"With Nau, I'd love to be proven right—and not just for business reasons," Van Dyke once told me. "That the confidence we have in people's basic optimism and generous spirit is well-founded. I want to know: Are there enough people out there who care about more than good stuff at good prices, who care about where the stuff comes from? Or where their money is going?"

Looks like now is the time to find out.