I get the sentiment but how exactly is raising literal millions in funds 'middle class' in startups? If I had a million dollars I could put together a team of founders who needed about 20k per year each to survive and we wouldn't need to raise until shit was actually finished with substantial revenue. Granted, this assumes you're not in Le Bay (I know) and your expenses are very low (like owning your house) but in my mind this is how startups should be done.

Get a bunch of people to move into one of the founders houses. Sleep on the floor if you have to. Have a coffee pot making bulk coffee for the whole house day-over. Live on nice healthy foods that require no cooking so you can code more. No take away obviously because its horribly over-priced. Plenty of cash for hosting services. Obviously no meme shit like cloud hosting. Use real servers for everything. There are even enough services that provide free resources to startups that you may not need to pay for this. You want to avoid the trap though: becoming dependent on services designed to screw your time and wallet later on.

Anyway, it seems like investors in startups only care about companies with million or billion dollar potential. You hear much less about people who build smaller profitable businesses, period. I'm guessing if it's a small business with limited growth potential you just have to bootstrap it with your own money.