When it comes to seeking investment for your start-up, here's a critical, and obvious, rule to keep in mind: when someone gives you something, they expect something in return.

So why is it that so many first-time entrepreneurs seem to lose sight of this simple fact? It's a given in nearly every aspect of our lives! You plunk down $2 at your local coffee shop, you get a latte. You spend eight hours toiling in the office, you get a paycheck. Duh.

But when it comes to venture capital or angel investment, many first-time entrepreneurs are under the impression that investors will write fat checks with little expected in return. We've even heard some entrepreneurs say that, given the chance, they'd forgoing bank lending in lieu of outside investment because they'd have to repay the bank.

Newsflash: you still have to pay an investor back. And while there may be no specific payback period, or interest rate, or any of the other terms that come with a bank loan, the expectation is that the investor will recoup all of their funds—and then some. Most serious investors are banking on getting at least eight times their return on investment after the business because profitable enough to support that—and that's at the low end of what they really want. Most are hoping for an IPO that will allow them to cash out and really rake in the bucks from your business. Trust us, that amount far exceeds whatever lump sum you would have had to repay the bank for taking out a small business loan. And to top it off, most investors also expect a percentage of your business in return for funding, and what that means is giving up some control. Of course, if your primarily rational for seeking outside investment in the first place is that you're freaked out by the concept of a loan, you're probably not going to get a meeting, let alone the funding in the first place.

Given all that, a bank loan with a fixed repayment term and a low interest rate doesn't sound all that bad after all, does it?