Outside of San Francisco and NY it seems much harder to raise money. The startups I know who did it outside of San Francisco did it this way. They self funded

Outside of San Francisco and NY it seems much harder to raise money. The startups I know who did it outside of San Francisco did it this way. They self funded or developed about a 1000hr MVP. They then took this MVP to friends and family to raise an additional 100-200k which kept them going long enough to get to a level of self sufficiency. At this point some took capital to scale and others just continued to bootstrap.