[tejay]

I dunno man. If you looked at the recent TechCrunch/VC exit data, your chances of 'exiting' with a VC funded startup are actually pretty bad. And that's what VC-funded startups are ultimately designed to do. I'd argue that if your goal is financial success, bootstrapping is actually better as a tactic purely on a financial basis!

The key thing though as you mentioned is you either gotta have a lot of personal cushion, or you gotta be willing to relocate to a fairly cheap area to temporarily lower your burn...like Nashville ;).