"Regardless, there are still good reasons to seek VC investment when profitable."
Oh I agree of course. VC will be judging you on future potential; a bank will be judging on current performance. If you need a million dollars to really scale up, you need the VC. Facebook or Youtube come to mind, they could have never achived what they have without VC.
But if you don't need the huge cash injection, if you just need to incrementally ramp things up slowly, then VC is not your only option; that's all I'm trying to say.