Reasonably priced debt is issued with the expectation that most recipients will succeed and access to it is generally limited to entities with a stable business model already.

VC money is mostly issued with the expectation that most recipients will fail and it's priced accordingly.

A strongly performing 'real' company (i.e. one with a strong profit stream) will nearly always prefer debt to VC money in the same way a strongly performing public company will issue bonds over selling more shares--the later tending to be for companies in trouble.