[tomgallard]

I guess you've got to look on the bright side though. When there's lots of VC money floating around, people feel like they have to raise capital, employee expensive people, get swish offices.

The secret is that you don't! Bootstrap yourself, focus on bringing in customer's money, rather than spending your equity (which is effectively what you're doing when you take funding).

Take this story http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/article/TMG9133619/Spanx-crea... . Sara Blakely has built a billion dollar company, which she owns 100%, without taking a penny of funding and using $5,000 dollar of her savings. And this is a physical product! When you're selling online services/software there should be even less need for it.