I know that many people see VC funding as some sort of holy grail, but given my experience over the past several decades, it is the last form of funding I want

I know that many people see VC funding as some sort of holy grail, but given my experience over the past several decades, it is the last form of funding I want to take. These days the internet provides infrastructure and distribution and a marketing medium, and open source removes much of the capital costs for a software or internet startup. I think everyone should be trying to get to profitability around the time they start needing to do a second angel round, or ideally before they get out of an accelerator. In most cases you don't need to hire a dozen engineers before getting profitability, even on a small scale, and if your idea is scalable, you can raise reasonably big rounds with angels these days (though I've not been thru an angel round, I'm assuming the terms are much more reasonable and the process more straightforward.) I hope to be profitable very quickly, and to plow those profits into growth %100. If we do raise outside funding, I'd like to do like PandoDaily did and have a syndicate of a dozen or more angels.