It .. depends. But I agree that most startups could benefit from a stronger emphasis on creating and growing cash-flow. The better you do at it the better your valuations will be if you do raise money. And if you can do so well that you don't ever need to raise money, all the better.
I'm working on my latest idea and what's most attractive about it to me is not that it can grow into a very large and very valuable world-wide business, even though it has that potential. But that I can bootstrap it myself into a small business with significant cash flow, and possibly grow it without ever taking funding. That's really attractive.
I've worked for both private and public companies. Public companies try to raise money by selling stock, and private companies have partners who want to find new ways to raise money.
For example I worked at a private company in 2002, I was hired because every employee they had failed to make the project faster and more stable. I did more in a few months than any of them did. Reports that ran in 15 minutes now ran in 15 seconds. The program no longer crashed servers and workstations. I converted the database from Excel and Access to SQL Server and used a backup Access database on the hard drive in the the main database was down and can sych when it is back up.
The company was bleeding money before they hired me, and earned 3.5 million after my changes. But I was fired after I made all my changes, I got Zuckerberged or whatever they call it when they use you to get to the next level and then fire you so you don't get rewards, etc.
I'm working on my latest idea and what's most attractive about it to me is not that it can grow into a very large and very valuable world-wide business, even though it has that potential. But that I can bootstrap it myself into a small business with significant cash flow, and possibly grow it without ever taking funding. That's really attractive.