Recent events in my personal life have led me to believe you can get "dumb money" with reasonable terms in NYC. So if you just need the dough, it's no problem these days... any idea and founders with a pulse will do. Get in on it while it lasts...
People think this is an abstraction. My VC-funded company hired a CEO (who I like) who decided our A-round-funded company was optimally positioned to go head-to-head with Akamai. I saw a board at another company wage a guerilla war against its management team. The threat here is not abstract.
Pros and cons, of course, but VC funding (especially when the VC gets to set the terms) is a world apart from angel funding.
I have no problems with angel funding (I'm really not all that familiar with it; no company I've been involved with has taken "angel money"), but I do have concerns about any company model that puts first-time founders on a burn-rate runway. There are less perilous ways to build a business.
Really depends on the investor. Some angels explicitly want you to go Series A -> Series B -> $100M -> IPO. Others explicitly want to help founders start cool companies. Some are basically mini-VCs, and others are really founder-friendly. So it's just important for a startup to have the right angels, whichever direction you go.
I only mention this because from my immediate perspective it seems easier to raise $100-$500K in NYC than it does to raise $10K from Y Combinator. Which is the better deal? I couldn't tell you.