One of the dangers for non-technology founders is that the way the startup community within the UK promotes entrepreneurialism and startup culture has got pretty ridiculous.
Over the 23-ish years since the dotcom boom, this subculture of UK business has got more and more insular, and more and more focused on theatre around entrepreneurialism. We can see some of this in shows like Dragons Den, or even The Apprentice where this sort of “us and them”, culture come to the fore.
Part of this is an obsession about fundraising – more specifically that to have a “proper” business you a) need investment, and b) need to stonk through that process as fast as humanly possible.
The reality is that whilst to create a technology business you will need some money, you don’t need to go and get institutional investment (and I’m counting angels as institutional). If you can find enough money to bootstrap, and have a good enough proposition to scale he business from cashflow… you are allowed to do that if you want.
I don’t think enough people say that to founders. However you want to do this, it’s OK.