You Don’t Need VC. You Need a Customer.

A founder opens their laptop, dials into a Zoom with a partner at a seed firm, and proceeds to perform. The deck is rehearsed. The TAM slide has a McKinsey logo in the corner. The roadmap includes AI, community, and flywheels. The founder is ready for questions on CAC, LTV, and maybe even a bespoke question about defensibility. What they are not ready for is an actual customer asking to pay them.

It sounds absurd, but it’s real. Founders will spend 40, 60, 80 hours crafting their pitch for someone who will ghost them - while ignoring the three prospects who filled out their Typeform asking for a demo.

Because the demo doesn’t get you a tweet from Elad Gil. It doesn’t get you invited to drinks with scouts from a tier-one fund. It doesn’t get you the optics of being "pre-seed backed by Not Boring Capital."

What it does get you is revenue.

Which is precisely why so many founders ignore it.

The Incentive System That Broke Founders

It would be easier to fix this if it were a matter of ignorance. But this isn’t naïve. It’s rational behavior in a warped environment.

Most founders have grown up in a startup culture optimized for narrative, not business. They’ve internalized that traction is what you build in a deck, not a ledger. They believe they are in a storytelling game. And for a while, that belief is rewarded. Y Combinator loves a clean founding myth. Press loves an underdog raising against the odds. LPs love an emerging manager with a nose for "the next Figma."

So the founder becomes a full-time screenwriter of a business that doesn’t exist yet, pitching to gatekeepers who are also selling stories - to LPs, to Twitter, to each other.

This is not a conspiracy. It’s a mutual hallucination.

And like all hallucinations, it falls apart the moment it hits something solid.

That solid thing is usually a customer.

Customers Don’t Care About Your Narrative

A customer doesn’t want your founding story. They want their problem solved. They don’t care about your total addressable market. They care about what your product does. They don’t care that you were part of On Deck or that your intern was ex-Coinbase. They care that your thing works, and that it’s better or cheaper than their current solution.

This is why customers are dangerous to the founder myth. Because they are a mirror that shows what is real. They are not interested in belief. They are interested in outcomes.

And when your pitch hits that kind of audience, one of two things happens. Either they pay you. Or they ignore you. Both are useful. One even pays the bills.

But it doesn't impress the investors who still think you need more social proof before they take a call.

Founders Optimizing for Applause

A shocking number of people build their product like they’re designing a trophy, not a tool. It’s meant to be looked at, not used. Shown to investors, not shipped to users. Announced on Product Hunt, not integrated in a workflow.

And if you point this out, the reaction is often incredulous: “Well, how am I supposed to raise if I don’t have a polished deck?"

The more interesting question is: why are you raising instead of selling?

When did "building a business" become shorthand for "pitching your startup to strangers on Zoom"?

When did a product-market fit become an exercise in vibe alignment with a partner at a16z?

There is a difference between building for distribution and building for performance. Right now, most founders are building for optics, not usage.

The worst part? They know it.

The Cult of VC as External Validation

There’s a recurring fantasy in startup culture: the idea that once you raise, you’re legit. It’s the same energy as waiting for someone to knight you. But capital is not credentialing. It’s not a mark of worth. It’s not even, often, a vote of confidence in your business. It’s a bet that you’ll be able to pull off the next fundable milestone before the money runs out.

That milestone is usually not revenue. It’s narrative progression. Headcount. Partnerships. Hires. Advisors. All things that are relatively easy to stage.

You can fake almost everything except the customer.

Customers are the last unfakeable KPI.

Traction is Not a Word. It’s a Number.

There’s a phrase VCs use when they want to sound positive without saying yes: “We want to see a bit more traction."

What they usually mean is: show us you're capable of making someone care. Enough to pay. Enough to use. Enough to churn and complain.

Traction is not a vibe. It’s a number. Ideally one that goes up.

And if it’s a number, it means you can generate it without a single dollar raised. By making a thing. Selling the thing. Doing it again.

It doesn’t have to be elegant. It doesn’t have to be venture-scale. But if you can pull it off, you are no longer dependent on the performative dance of the funding cycle.

You’re not a pitch. You’re a business.

Stripe vs SAFE: A Tale of Two Onramps

There is a moment in the life of a startup where you must decide what form of validation matters. Is it the wire transfer from an angel investor? Or the payout from your first Stripe transaction?

One of these builds your cap table. The other builds your P&L.

Most founders choose the SAFE. Not because it’s more strategic, but because it’s more flattering.

Stripe is cold. Stripe is indifferent. Stripe will not compliment your pitch. It will not ask you for coffee in SoMa. It will not tell you you’re brilliant.

Stripe will just pay you.

And that, for some reason, feels less validating than a VC’s kind words. Even though it’s more useful. More durable. And less reversible.

The Founder's Delusion

Founders tell themselves all kinds of things to avoid doing sales. "We’re too early." "It doesn’t scale." "It’s not a priority yet."

The truth is, most are scared. Selling is a confrontation with the real. It is immediate feedback. It is rejection. It is someone telling you they don’t believe you, or worse, that they don’t care.

Pitching a VC lets you believe in the abstract. Selling a product forces you to engage with the specific. And specifics are hard.

But they're also how businesses are built. One painful transaction at a time.

Why the First Million Still Matters

The first million dollars in revenue is not glamorous. It is not scalable. It is often embarrassing.

It comes from cold DMs. Manual onboarding. Scrappy integrations. Ugly dashboards.

But it is the only thing that can actually unlock durable leverage. Because it means someone cared. And paid. And came back.

And once that exists, everything else becomes easier.

VCs return your calls. Press writes stories. Employees take the job.

The traction you were trying to fake is now real.

A Product That Sells

It sounds almost too obvious to be useful. But the most underrated growth hack in 2025 is a product that sells.

Not goes viral. Not wins awards. Not gets retweeted by Naval. Just sells.

And yet we’ve created an ecosystem where that’s considered a backup plan. “Revenue optional" is still a phrase that gets used with a straight face.

It’s not optional. It’s the point.

Final Thought

You don’t need VC. You need a customer.

You need a Stripe account.

You need a calendar link that isn’t just for fundraising.

You need proof of work that isn’t a slide deck.

And you need the humility to recognize that no one owes you capital. But someone might pay you to solve their problem.

Start there.