There are actually other options. I'm 38 and managed to eke out about 2 years of runway without touching VC money from grants and private donations. No family money or huge savings.

If you're building interesting things in an area where many people are annoyed with the status quo, you can according to my survivorship bias have money thrown at you, which then becomes self-reinforcing, since you can put more time into the project and find more success.

But there's admittedly a chicken and egg problem. I only got to that point by not having much work-life balance.