The harsh reality is that most businesses will not get either of these. Funding on the scale that most startups want usually only goes to companies with existing sales, existing relationships, or founders with track records of raising money and making money.   I have done a number of proformas for startups and it always comes down to this: how do you do reduce your need on super funding and super initial sales?

For example, a company may have an initial burn rate of $60,000 per month. Their sales in month one is zero and they have no existing contracts.  They expect to eventually do $100,000 in sales per month (this is a small business). They are not going to do that right away.  If they are lucky it will ramp up within the first year.

So in 12 months they make $650,000 and spend $720,000 which leaves a shortfall of $70,000.  Not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but say they only have $25,000.  What do they do? They may be able to find investors for the $45,000.00; but what if their sales projections are off, and they only do half that amount? Then they are off by $375,000 (still include their $25,000).

I always look at the following things that they can directly control: reducing costs, stage buying things, and stage expansion.