Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’ve faced the same thing — there are no real investors out there, not in the sense of those who take risks and make their living from it.
I registered on OpenVC and completed their form — the system gave me 27 out of 100 points.
That’s how investors evaluate projects: not by studying the idea, but based on standard template parameters.
This is just one example, but others work the same way — “how many people are on the team,” “what’s your education,” and so on.
They don’t care about pre-seed at all — only ready-made projects that already bring in money.
I may not be an expert in investing, but honestly, why would I need an investor when everything already works and makes a profit?
What you said about unicorns is also true.
I believe my project has huge potential — for now, it’s just my opinion, but I’ve already spent about €1200–1500 on the prototype and around 1000 hours on the mathematical model, presentations, videos, and website.
I know some will laugh at that number — I used to think it would take €30,000 through an investor just to build early-stage prototype. I was wrong.
But at some point, I realized: I don’t need an investor. I can handle this myself.
AI helped a lot too — it sped up many processes.
stephnass 2 days ago [-]
Hey OpenVC founder here! Thanks for trying the Fundability test :)
The test is not out of 100 points. The idea is to place you against other companies raising at the same time. If you have no revenue and everyone else has revenue, you will rank lower because at the end of the day, it's a competition.
As a general rule, investors invest if (a) you have track record or (b) you have traction i.e. users and/or revenue. If you have neither, look at grants, accelerators, and family and friends instead. And your own money, ofc.
I know it's counter-intuitive for many. Aren't VCs supposed to take risks and put the first check in?
That's not how VCs think. They will see 5,000 decks a year and invest in 5, so they just pick the strongest projects at a given point in time.
Not denying your efforts and potential, but there's just another project that looks better on paper: more proven team, more traction. It's all relative.
Alright, I understand you — you're evaluating not the project, but the person, because what matters to an investor is not even the project, but the partner.
But what does your test have to do with evaluating a person?
A machine assembled in 2010 in the central part of the US — is it good or bad? Should I have bought it?
How will you understand from that test the level of intelligence, motivation, willpower, creativity of thinking, or depth of market understanding?
It’s just a way to filter out those whose project is already generating income — especially those for whom this is not their first profitable project. This test shows nothing more.
hnlurker22 19 hours ago [-]
What about the large number of failures of (a) and (b)? I've worked with so many startups and recently all I can think of is what garbage are these investors investing in, and how is this garbage that's going to die within a year making me so much money (as an employee).
Raiev 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, you're right — just put "AI" in the name and millions of dollars start flowing in.
The main thing is hype. You go to investors, to grown-up rational people — and there's neither the first nor the second.
aristofun 1 days ago [-]
> why would I need an investor when everything already works and makes a profit?
To scale up and make 1000x profit.
Nobody cares about your brilliant idea or even nice looking prototype until you have proven you can make money with it.
Just too risky for investors in current economy.
And education, team etc while may look irrelevant are actually more correlated with future success than details of startup idea etc.
Raiev 3 hours ago [-]
Investors aren’t interested in ideas, aren’t interested in people, they don’t want to take risks — the person you described is not an investor.
I can put my money in a bank — it’s the same thing.
They don’t want to take risks because the times are unstable?
1) but was it any different in stable times?
2) I’ve looked at projects that got funding — almost any AI project with a dumb idea raises millions, but that’s not risk — that’s a safe and stable project.
3) for real investors, the emergence of a huge number of new technologies multiplied by global economic shifts is a great opportunity — new markets appear and old ones are being redistributed. It doesn’t get any better than this.
aristofun 2 days ago [-]
I argue that building a software is just a small part of the story. Not the most important one.
The most important one is a customer acquisition.
There is an ocean of cool but dead software products and a sea of mediocre successfull ones with the right business model and sales/marketing strategy/budgets.
If you stay solo while in the large and profitable market - you're either stay very small, get flushed away by a competitor with big money or become the competitor with big money.
rallyvite 2 days ago [-]
1000% agree, distribution strategy and ideally a unique way to drive adoption built into the product or service creates the most value and thus optionality for founders.
I've personally tried many bootstrapped companies with little success but a couple that did get escape velocity (one hit 9 figure revenues by year 8), the common denominator was a well-thought out, embedded customer acquisition tightly integrated into the core product. Very hard to couple given how excited we tend to get building a solution to a problem we see. But super critical, really good insight here.
Slava27 2 days ago [-]
Sure, no questions that sales and stuff are crucial. And solo-founder is not just dev - he must be everything. But the idea is - now there's way more chances to succeed.
aristofun 2 days ago [-]
That’s my pont. Chances are better for sure, but not “way more”. Because no LLM will replace a great marketing idea or budgets.
They don’t care about pre-seed at all — only ready-made projects that already bring in money. I may not be an expert in investing, but honestly, why would I need an investor when everything already works and makes a profit?
What you said about unicorns is also true. I believe my project has huge potential — for now, it’s just my opinion, but I’ve already spent about €1200–1500 on the prototype and around 1000 hours on the mathematical model, presentations, videos, and website. I know some will laugh at that number — I used to think it would take €30,000 through an investor just to build early-stage prototype. I was wrong.
But at some point, I realized: I don’t need an investor. I can handle this myself. AI helped a lot too — it sped up many processes.
The test is not out of 100 points. The idea is to place you against other companies raising at the same time. If you have no revenue and everyone else has revenue, you will rank lower because at the end of the day, it's a competition.
As a general rule, investors invest if (a) you have track record or (b) you have traction i.e. users and/or revenue. If you have neither, look at grants, accelerators, and family and friends instead. And your own money, ofc.
I know it's counter-intuitive for many. Aren't VCs supposed to take risks and put the first check in?
That's not how VCs think. They will see 5,000 decks a year and invest in 5, so they just pick the strongest projects at a given point in time.
Not denying your efforts and potential, but there's just another project that looks better on paper: more proven team, more traction. It's all relative.
On that topic, check out these 2 graphs that apply to your case: https://x.com/StephNass/status/1859447351187787826
For a longer read with some maths, this post by Jonah Probell is eye opening: https://www.openvc.app/blog/seed-stage-is-about-picking-winn...
To scale up and make 1000x profit.
Nobody cares about your brilliant idea or even nice looking prototype until you have proven you can make money with it.
Just too risky for investors in current economy.
And education, team etc while may look irrelevant are actually more correlated with future success than details of startup idea etc.
1) but was it any different in stable times? 2) I’ve looked at projects that got funding — almost any AI project with a dumb idea raises millions, but that’s not risk — that’s a safe and stable project. 3) for real investors, the emergence of a huge number of new technologies multiplied by global economic shifts is a great opportunity — new markets appear and old ones are being redistributed. It doesn’t get any better than this.
The most important one is a customer acquisition.
There is an ocean of cool but dead software products and a sea of mediocre successfull ones with the right business model and sales/marketing strategy/budgets.
If you stay solo while in the large and profitable market - you're either stay very small, get flushed away by a competitor with big money or become the competitor with big money.
I've personally tried many bootstrapped companies with little success but a couple that did get escape velocity (one hit 9 figure revenues by year 8), the common denominator was a well-thought out, embedded customer acquisition tightly integrated into the core product. Very hard to couple given how excited we tend to get building a solution to a problem we see. But super critical, really good insight here.
https://www.saas.wtf/p/saas-anti-vcs