Well, this was awhile ago so I don't know how relevant the advice is today, but when I did a startup in the 90's we didn't take any angel money for over a year

Well, this was awhile ago so I don't know how relevant the advice is today, but when I did a startup in the 90's we didn't take any angel money for over a year and until we had our first live customers. What we did was run super cheap, crappy office space, minimal everything, didn't take any salary ourselves. We wrote code all night and called prospects all day. I was never really comfortable cold calling, but I learned to be. We were selling to banks and called anyone we could find contact info on. Not spending any money we didn't have to spend, and not giving up until some people said yes, basically.