What are your biggest challenges when raising funds right now?
Having sat on both sides of the table, here are the 3 biggest unforced errors I see, looking at it as both an investor and now a founder:
1. The market size does not hold.
Many founders use a top-down approach with questionable data sources to claim a massive TAM. In my opinion, a much more credible and defensible approach is to build your market size from the bottom-up.
2. Trying to do too many things.
In the early stages, you can only focus on a few areas, starting with your beachhead market. It is incredibly difficult to juggle product development, consulting, and training revenue simultaneously and still hope the business will scale. Even with AI efficiencies, stretching the team too thin kills momentum.
3. Not thinking deeply enough about the Moat and GTM.
A great product does not automatically equal a great business. If you haven't thoroughly thought through your Go-To-Market strategy and why your business is defensible against competitors, the pitch falls flat.
For the founders here: What are the top challenges or objections you are facing when pitching right now? Let's discuss it.
Replies
a tired engineer running a hand-written UPDATE query at 6pm on a Friday is probably riskier than an agent that shows you the SQL and waits for approval" is the line that reframes this whole debate. the risk was never AI vs human... it was unchecked access vs guardrails. most production disasters I've heard about came from humans moving fast without review, not from AI doing something unexpected. the approval fatigue point is real though. the moment people start auto-approving without reading, the guardrail becomes theater
The hardest part right now is standing out. Investors have seen so many pitches that sound alike, so the real work is proving your take is genuinely different, not just another version of the same idea.
WebCurate.co
For me, one of the biggest challenges would be proving traction early.
A lot of investors like the idea, but at the end of the day they want to see real users, growth, and signs that people genuinely need the product. I think that's where the hardest part is.