Big Money or Shoestring?

[Braviq]

As I mentioned in my previous post, my husband and I are finishing up our business plan, but we've hit a snag.

We can't decide on how to fund the company!

For all intents and purposes, the site is almost ready for inventory; we've spent our own money and time on the office, site, etc.; we just don't want to put any more of our own money into it and we're not going to use the credit cards that we paid off. So we're looking for funding.

-SHOESTRING-
Right now, we're thinking we could just go with around $20k (from Prosper & al.), and that would fund our first round of inventory, shipping supplies, marketing, needed office equipment, and a little padding. We'd work the business part time, and since the markup on our product is ~90%, we'd double our money. We'd then pay off the original loan and use the profit to purchase our next round of inventory. That would snowball and eventually we'd be running the business full time.

-BIG MONEY-
We could ask for enough to cover expenses for the first couple years, hire folks, etc. This would be starting the business full on, immediately. It would mean strapping the company with sizable debt, but we'd buy substantially more inventory and spend much more on marketing.

But we need to make a decision as this affects the entire business plan, not to mention who we ask for funding.

What do y'all think? Should we start small or go for the bling?

[BusinessAdviser]

It's less a question of which SHOULD you do, and more a question of which you CAN do.