It is better to attract an investor. The investor is at least interested in the success of the enterprise, whereas the bank is only interested in paying back the loan and interest. In case of any difficulties, which always occur, an investor can be more flexible than a bank. The bank will either destroy the entire company, demanding repayment of the loan, or restructure the loan so that the founder will own almost nothing in his own company. Of course, it is more difficult to find and convince an investor to invest than to take out a loan from a bank, especially at a high interest rate.
As said it is an investor for a startup. When it comes to business, we can depend on loan. There is huge difference between business and startup. Business is something proven, we just find the right one and market it or open the business in a place where there is demand for it. This is low risk and can be more calculative. For this loan suits perfect and one can succeed.
When it comes to a startup it is much about innovation and scaling. Here an investor is the right choice, because he needs to understand the model, the function and how this going to reach the people around the world. Startup is kind of experimenting, so we don't know the right outcome. For startup I'll find a right investor, until then we need to keep working on it.
It theoretically looks like this. In an ideal situation. In practice, any business is always fraught with difficulties. The bank doesn't care about these difficulties at all. On the contrary, it often happens that a bank loan is part of a scheme to raid a business that is specifically bankrupted in order to take over production facilities. So I think that a bank loan is always a worse choice than an investor. Regardless of whether you are starting a startup (making scratching posts for cats from corrugated cardboard) or an already well-known business (for example, growing strawberries).
By the way, we have a blogger who has been interviewing various entrepreneurs about their business for several years, and several times. So for the last year, they mostly talked about how they were forced to close the business, often with debts to the bank... The reasons are different, generally due to problems in the country's economy, but one thing is in common - a bank loan is not a lifeline, it is rather a weight on the foot of a drowning man.