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.