[asien]

To be very clear , this articles won’t help you much if you don’t fit the criteria’s the OP does.

Having discussed with VC a long time ago , it was very HARD to raise money without a very strong traction.

Very often VC were convinced with my pitch , and my product but would not invest either because they had stuff somewhat similar in their portfolio and often because I didn’t have a “track records” to proof my capability.

If I can recommend one thing to technical founder : don’t listen to this and build slowly while creating your own community ( users , customers etc...) and VC will come , don’t worry.

VCs are like dogs when they smell money they have the urge to come at you, you won’t need to call them.

For non-tech founder it’s the opposite : don’t make anything that is complicated or sophisticated, focus 100% on marketing and prototyping , I had friends raising 10M+€ for products that didn’t exist or couldn’t do a tenth of what was promised , but because they graduated from the most prestigious schools in Paris or London and had invested hundred of thousands in marketing ( 50K€ Website , Dozens of Articles in the Press claiming their idea was worth billions , Attending Conferences to reach out to executives in order to get corporates sponsors etc..)

VCs will prefer a strong team with a stupid idea that a Fortune 500 will be naive enough to acquire , rather than a good idea with an unproven team that would make money quickly after initial build phase.

[dboreham]

Exactly. Remember also that VC are rich and powerful therefore much of what you read and think about investing and startups is written for their benefit. Avoid drinking the kool aid.