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> if it's an actual, viable business

Maybe one in ten vc backed startups will find a viable business model eventually.

If you don't take vc money maybe it's easier to find a smaller viable business, but then it's harder to pay yourself.

There is a huge range of profitability that would be incredible for a founder who owns all our the best majority of the company, but a failure for most VCs. I don't know VC finance enough to say where the upper limit is, but I'm pretty sure several million $ profit per year still is in that range.

You can start pretty much any business and be successful with a small group of founders and no VC money (from experience, this can be anything from a wholesale flower business to a WordPress plugin to a hosting provider). The problem is that VCs push you to grow too fast and too hard, then pull funding when it "fails" and you've got an entire staff to feed, pay, and manage. Thus, you go bankrupt.

If you choose to play a long game, you can have a nice stable-ish income for 2-3 people after 5-ish years.

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