Why Fundraising Is Not a Total Waste of Time

Fundraising Sucks

Ask any founder what they dread most, and fundraising will likely top the list. Many view it as a frustrating process that takes time away from "real" work. And it does take away from the real work. It's a four to six-month full-time job, on top of the most punishing job a human could have—early-stage startup CEO.

Just some of the very valid reasons founders hate fundraising:

The overwhelm you feel when your inbox is full of fundraising emails, and you have so much real work to do on your startup.
The negative feelings that come with more rejection than you've ever faced in your life.
How nobody says no clearly, so you never know why you're being rejected.
The huge percentage of VCs that waste your time without hesitation.
Trying to get far enough inside VCs' heads to even clearly understand what the (seemingly ever-changing) benchmarks are for investment.
The exercise of crafting a billion-dollar narrative and rearchitecting your financials repeatedly to make a hockey stick.
How often the exercise above feels like lying.
The need for a warm intro to even get a meeting, meaning fundraising has to start six months earlier than the raise itself if you don't have a built-in network.
Building a 'hot round', or creating FOMO, feels like an inauthentic (manipulative) exercise in crowd-based thinking.
How easily some investors forget that it's so much easier to give feedback than to do the work.
How foreign term sheets and valuations seem, and how one-sided early-stage negotiations can feel.

smiling emoji balloon beside black car during daytime

If you succeed at closing your round, the joy is fleeting. Relief takes over, followed by the exhale of the breath you’ve been holding for the entirety of the fundraise. It leaves you feeling like a fully deflated balloon.

A startup founder’s number one job is to get out of their own way—and by extension, their startup’s way. The second most important job? Never run out of money.

Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment.

Why Fundraising Is Not a Total Waste of Time

Fundraising is a distraction, but it’s also the ultimate sales test. Customers and VCs have a few foundational things in common:

Limited attention spans.
Hard to reach at scale.
Difficult to convince to give you money.

If VCs don’t understand your value proposition, customers may not either. Or your value proposition may resonate with a smaller group of customers than you anticipate.

The best way to secure funding is to give investors exactly what they need to make a decision. Customers are no different—they won’t dig through unclear details to understand your value.

As a society, we respect VCs. They’ve been given access to the money, and we believe that it’s for a reason. It’s hard to take harsh feedback from people we respect. Think about VCs as a captive audience whose job is to shake you down.

Selling to VCs Is Like Selling to Customers

Selling your startup to investors is not all that different from selling your product to customers. Both require you to:

Identify the problem you’re solving.
Explain how your solution uniquely addresses that problem.
Build trust and credibility.

The questions VCs ask often reflect the concerns your target market will have:

"How are you different from competitors?"
"What problem do you solve, and is it worth paying for?"
"Can you actually grow your business without burning through cash?"
"Do your customers love you and come back for more?'

If investors find your pitch unclear or unconvincing, how will you succeed with customers who are even less invested in understanding your technology? Fundraising forces you to refine your messaging, simplify your value proposition, and focus on outcomes instead of jargon—all essential skills for attracting and retaining customers.

While investors may not always be right, their feedback often highlights gaps in your thinking. They’ve seen countless startups and recognize patterns you may not.

Clarity Trumps Complexity

Founders often feel compelled to over-explain, thinking their product won’t speak for itself. This leads to overcrowded pitches and websites that overwhelm rather than inform. When you’re complex, you lack clarity. When you lack clarity, you lack the ability to execute with limited resources. If I had a dollar for every deep-tech founder who said, "You don’t get it because you’re not technical," I’d have a penthouse next to Elon Musk on Mars.

Mark Twain put it best:

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

Clear and simple—so clear and simple that it seems obvious—is how early-stage startups succeed despite limited resources. An early-stage startup thrives only by solving real pain with a true solution. Customers must love your product enough to forgive the bugs, the missing features, and the clunky interface.

Over-explaining often stems from a lack of confidence.

Repetition Builds Mastery

Fundraising, from start to finish, is a funnel. At every step, you must decrease friction. Every pitch is an opportunity to refine your story. Think of VCs as a captive audience, required to ask tough questions and care about your startup—even if only for 30 minutes, which is longer than any customer will ever give you to convince them.

Nobody wants to meet after seeing your pitch deck and company introduction? That sucks, but go ahead then. Learn what resonates and what doesn’t, adapt quickly, and expect to edit your pitch deck over and over again. Resilience is a muscle.

Fundraising Is Never a Fast Solution

Fundraising is never a fast solution to any problem.

VCs won't fund you if you only have a month or two of runway left—you’re likely to fail, so why would they take the risk?

Sending half-baked documents to VCs is a surefire way to ruin future relationships. Why would someone trust you with their money if you don’t take their process seriously?

When founders tell me they just want to get their round closed quickly, and I can see they’re not open to feedback about why they’re not getting funded, I’ve learned the hard way to take a step back. Many of us, myself included, learn life lessons through experience. 90% of founders who want a "fast round" come back three months later with a mess on their hands and in need of a re-start.

The only way to make fundraising an exercise that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out is preparation. Apply the basic tenets of startups and get prepared for the volume—from pitches to documents—because doing it right takes time and effort.

Final Thoughts

The best founders know when to pause fundraising and focus on building or pivoting.

Continuing to pitch a startup that VCs aren’t interested in is as counterproductive as pushing an underperforming product onto reluctant customers.

There are very few true billion-dollar opportunities in the world, and if your startup isn’t a VC moonshot, that’s okay. Stop banging your head against a brick wall. Success comes from clarity—from refining your fundamentals, addressing feedback, and building a business that aligns with the right opportunities—not from forcing a narrative that doesn’t fit.

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Lane Litz is a proven startup founder, operator, and venture capitalist with a track record of building, scaling, and investing in high-potential startups. As employee #6 at VIPKID, she helped grow the company to a $3B valuation. Later, as the CEO and Co-founder of Speakia, she navigated challenging market conditions to lead the startup to acquisition. Her time in venture capital gave her a front-row seat to the systemic flaws in traditional VC, inspiring her to found Founder VC. Now, Lane is reshaping the venture landscape with a founder-first approach, focusing on sustainable investments that deliver measurable value for both founders and investors.