If you don't have a rocket, the rocket fuel will be wasted and disappointing in any other vehicle. Ideally you bootstrap until it's clear. But if you start the company with VC funding, you should know the expectation.
If you truly have a rocket the economics of VC funding is favorable for everyone.
To be honest, startups play on another level than most SMBs. With a SMB, you can double your growth every year for 5-10 years straight, and do very well, but not be interesting for VCs. To be interesting and relevant for VC money, you need a business that can scale to millions of users.
If you can show that you're able to double growth every month (or similar short-window metrics) with an idea that could scale to a billion dollar company, you'll get the interviews all right. Hype is a big part of growth.
The problem, so to speak, is that you'll be competing against other startups - and if you they have the VC money, but you don't, there's a good chance they'll outpace/outgrow you.
I think it's very noble to grow as much as you can organically - but realistically speaking, it's difficult to compete against those that are funded.
And you don't really need to use the money you get - being funded also comes with a signaling effect. You get lots of publicity, and get to signal that serious investors are willing to back you.
One common benchmark for startups at the $1m/year stage is T2D3 (triple, triple, double, double, double).
That’s the trick… you don’t. And neither do they.
I believe it’s a pretty well-understood statistic that most VC-funded businesses are not successful, and the VCs are only successful because a small number of investments are massively profitable.
Neither VCs nor companies know for sure if they _will_ rocket. VCs are looking for businesses and founders who _could_ rocket.
It's not necessarily better to be one or the other, I just don't like people who work solely for the money. And people scamming VCs (who want to be scammed) are not people I choose to hang with, even though I met quite a few.