Shoot for a bank loan! <-- what you'll never hear from startup advisors but is exactly the type of mental framework you should adopt if you're bootstrapping or working on limited seed round funds.

But banks don't lend to startups! <-- they sure don't

But you know who they do consider lending to? Companies with minimum 3 years of tax returns, breakeven cashflow and realistic projections and payback window.

This is of course difficult to do and the dreaded chasm where most startups die. In the process you may even be categorized as gasp a small business- but some of the most successful people I know started small businesses, retained ownership, methodically grew sales to medium to large business scale, and along the way established long standing non-dilutive lending sources aka banks.