Some ideas have huge buy in. They're capital intensive and that's just the way it is. Even for other ideas, sometimes it's nice to have founders not worried if they're going to be homeless. Definitely tradeoffs on both approaches but I can see the reason why some choose to pursue VC funding from the beginning.
That goes towards my second point. Everyone has living expenses. Not all founders are in a position where they can afford to drop their income to $0 for extended periods of time.
