After 200+ investor conversations, one thing surprised me
Over the last couple of weeks while building VIDI solo, I’ve had a large number of conversations across AI, SaaS, and infrastructure.
What’s been most interesting wasn’t really the AI discussion itself.
It was hearing experienced people share stories, lessons, and perspectives from companies they’ve built, scaled, advised, or invested in over the years.
Some of those conversations also reshaped how I think about VIDI.
Still extremely early obviously.
But recently, a few conversations started feeling increasingly aligned around the longer-term direction.
Currently continuing conversations around the pre-seed round. At this point, there’s already interest from a potential follow-on investor - the main focus now is finding the right lead investor fit.
For now, continuing to build, refine the product, and learn every week.
Also recently launched subscriptions:
TRENCHLINE → 30% off Starter
NANOMACHINE → 20% off Growth
Still early obviously, but one thing I didn’t expect from fundraising was how many conversations would turn into broader discussions around company building, positioning, and long-term thinking rather than just the product itself.
that sounds really good, do you mind me asking what kind of product you offer and where you promote them?
Mostly LinkedIn, email outreach, and a few other platforms right now.
WOW That sounds nice, i guessed you might be doing well there, you're having sales ?
Can’t really share too much publicly yet, still very early.
can we share contact? i also have some tips to share with your as well
Appreciate it, but I’m mostly staying focused on building right now 🙌
sounds good
Makes sense. Sometimes the most valuable part of these conversations is seeing how experienced people think through markets, timing, and company building over years, not just product features.
Exactly. Seeing how experienced people think over long periods of time has probably been the most valuable part.
Yeah, that long-term perspective is underrated - most people focus on tactics, but patterns over time matter way more. Same thing in business and especially in startups too, even if the context is a bit different.
Exactly. A lot of the important stuff only becomes obvious over longer periods of time.
What's been the most surprising thing you've heard from those conversations that actually changed how you think about the product?
A lot honestly 😅 some of the most valuable insights were also the hardest to publicly summarize without losing the nuance. Still processing many of them myself.
The part about conversations reshaping how you think about the product is what stood out to me. Even without the funding angle, just talking to experienced people who've scaled companies forces you to pressure-test assumptions you didn't even know you were making. I've been building bootstrapped and solo — no investor conversations, just customer conversations — and even those have changed the direction of features I was certain about. Curious what the one thing that surprised you was — the title has me hooked but I don't see the reveal yet!
Honestly, probably how often completely different people kept pointing toward similar underlying themes from different angles. Still learning from that.
Really appreciate you sharing the numbers transparently. The part about "validation before building" resonated — I actually fell into that trap too with my first project. What channel ended up driving your first 10 signups?
Mostly LinkedIn and a few other online communities/platforms. A lot of it also came through direct conversations early on.
This matches my experience on the other side of the table. I write checks at pre-seed and the founders who get the most out of those 200+ conversations treat them as cheap market research, not as fundraising. Most investor opinions on your product are noise. The signal is in their pattern matching on the problem space, and the questions they keep returning to. Track those, not the soft 'looks interesting, keep me posted' replies.
Yeah that’s been one of the biggest lessons honestly.
After enough conversations, the useful part stops being the surface-level opinions and starts being the patterns behind the questions people consistently return to.
It is very useful
Appreciate it -definitely learned a lot from those conversations already.
The pattern recognition point is real. Someone who's seen 50 versions of your company can compress 6 months of your learning into a 20-minute conversation even if they never invest. The conversations that reshaped how you think about VIDI are probably worth more than the term sheets long-term. What surprised me most reading this: 200+ conversations while still building solo. That's a lot of context switching. Curious how you kept product momentum going while running that many investor calls in parallel.
Appreciate that. A lot of the value honestly came from seeing recurring patterns across conversations.
And yeah, balancing both was difficult at times 😅 mostly just tried to stay very focused on execution between calls and keep momentum moving every week.
This is a good reminder that investor calls can be useful even before the money part happens :-)
Its good to get exposed to how people who have seen a lot of companies think about the market, timing, positioning, and what could become big.
Also sounds like you’re doing the right thing by not just looking for any lead. At pre-seed that probably matters a lot because the wrong investor can push the company in a direction that sounds good on paper but doesn’t fit the product or founder.
Curious what changed the most in how you think about VIDI after those conversations? :-)
Best /A
Still a bit too early to go deep into that publicly, but a few conversations definitely changed how I evaluate certain signals.
The most underrated part of investor conversations isn't the money — it's the pattern recognition you get for free. Someone who's seen 200 startups in your space can tell you in 15 minutes what would take you 6 months to learn through trial and error. Even if they never invest, that conversation was worth more than most paid advisory calls.
The "conversations reshaping how I think about VIDI" part is the real signal here. If multiple experienced people are independently pointing you in a similar direction, that's not noise — that's convergence. And convergence from people with no stake in your success is more trustworthy than validation from people who want to sell you something.
Yeah, definitely learned that not every perspective should be treated equally. A lot of it is understanding where someone’s viewpoint is coming from and filtering accordingly.
I think the real question your 200 conversations surface isn't "what did investors teach you" but "which investor conversations were structurally different from advisor conversations." From my much smaller indie side (sub-100 users, no fundraise), the pattern I keep noticing is that the people who reshape my thinking are almost never the ones I expected to. Mine were two random strangers who replied to a Build in Public post — neither had any reason to engage. Investors filter, advisors filter, but unexpected serendipity tends to produce the sharpest reframes because there's no incentive overlap. Curious if any of your most reshaping conversations came from outside the actual pitch pipeline — and whether you've started seeking those out deliberately.
Hard to go too deep publicly, but yeah, some of the more interesting conversations definitely came from unexpected places outside the normal investor flow.
Probably the moment someone asked 'Who loses if your product disappears tomorrow?' I was giving the standard answer about productivity and speed. Then someone asked me to name a specific person who'd be genuinely worse off. When I said 'someone with RSI who types all day' the whole conversation changed. The market I thought I was building for and the one that actually needed me were different places. That one question rewired 6 months of positioning.
Interesting perspective, but I think sometimes markets also evolve because of how products are positioned and executed over time.
agreed -- positioning can absolutely surface a market that looked invisible before someone named it clearly. the 'who loses' question didn't change the market, it changed what I was pointing at inside it. so the positioning work and the market evolution you're describing aren't in conflict -- one creates the conditions for the other.
the thing I've noticed is that when founders skip that question, they end up selling to the person they imagined rather than the person who actually needs it. the market was always there, just unlabeled.
Interesting perspective, although I’m not sure every market starts as something “already there but unlabeled.” Sometimes products themselves genuinely change user behavior over time too.
Did 200+ raises and now sit on the other side of the table at Henson Venture Partners. The thing nobody tells founders: most investor 'advice' is not about your company. It is about the last company that investor missed. Useful, but worth filtering. The conversations that actually reshape your thinking come from operators who have shipped, not just allocators. Question for you: of the 200, how many came from warm intros vs cold? And which group changed your mind more?
Mostly cold through LinkedIn and email outreach.
And yeah, after enough conversations you start understanding how to filter different perspectives depending on where they’re coming from. Some of the most useful insights came from people who’ve actually built and operated things themselves.
The car sales analogy is actually perfect. Even the best reps on the floor couldn't move inventory when the model year felt long in the tooth -- the market sets a ceiling that pure skill can't push through.
What I've taken from that pattern building Genie 007: being early to a market feels almost identical to being in a market with no demand. From inside the pitch, the conversation looks the same either way.
Partially agree, but I think execution and adaptation can change a lot more than people expect.
you're right that I'm probably drawing the ceiling too firmly. the founders who push through timing usually end up finding a slightly different market on the other side -- not the original one, but an adjacent pocket where demand already existed. the adaptation does the work, but what it finds is often a different problem than the one you started with.
curious if that maps to what you've seen with VIDI -- is the positioning you have now close to what you went in with, or has it shifted substantially?
Still learning and adjusting a lot in real time.
The conversations reshaping how you think about the product is the genuinely useful part of fundraising that nobody talks about. I've had the same experience on the BD side -- walked into partnership calls pitching and walked out with a completely different read on my own positioning.
200+ conversations across AI, SaaS, and infra is also a serious market research project if you treat it that way. The patterns in what people ask you about, what they skip over, what makes them lean forward -- that's signal most founders don't capture systematically.
What was the single question from those conversations that most changed how you think about VIDI?
It’s difficult to share specific ones publicly, but one example I can say is how much things ultimately depend on the market itself (like in car sales - even a great product still depends on how much demand exists overall).
the car sales answer is exactly the kind of thing that sounds like pessimism from the outside but isn't -- it's just precision about what the product can actually control.
what does the demand signal look like for VIDI right now? curious whether the market question you're navigating is more about timing (market exists but not ready) or about which problem layer you're actually solving for.
Honestly, I’m still trying to understand that myself in real time 😅 probably a mix of timing, positioning, and figuring out which layer actually matters most long-term. I actually wrote a bit more about that shift here recently too:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-thought-a-broader-market-would-make-vidi-stronger-i-was-wrong-0501b19f7f
The timing vs positioning question is one I keep returning to. From inside a build they can look identical until something small reveals which one is actually the constraint. The post title says it well. Narrowing down looks like retreat from outside but usually isn't. What was the moment you knew the broader framing wasn't it?
Honestly, I don’t think there was one single moment. It was probably more a gradual accumulation of small signals over time than one dramatic realization.
That accumulation framing matches what I've noticed too. No single conversation shifted the Genie 007 positioning. It was more like 10 small signals in a row that eventually pointed the same direction. By the time I noticed, I'd already started adjusting.
This resonates deeply — what most investors are really sniffing for is whether the business can compound without the founder as the linchpin. One thing that often surprises founders: 2026 M&A multiples are very different from 2021. The compression hit most, but businesses with clean ARR, sub-2% monthly churn, and a team that can run without the founder are still commanding strong multiples. Worth understanding where your business sits before you're deep in those conversations.
Definitely. A lot of people underestimate how much operational durability matters long term.
Really cool to hear how those convos gave you perspective beyond just the AI talk. As someone not deep in the investor world, I’m curious did any of those stories change how you’re thinking about building VIDI itself, or more about the fundraising side?
A bit of both honestly, but still keeping most of those details private while things are early.
GET IN TOUCH WITH A LICENSED CRYPTO RECOVERY HACKER EXPERT: ALPHA KEY
After investing over $458,760 worth of USDT, everything turned out to be a scam. I was depressed and on the verge of taking my own life until a coworker recommended ALPHA KEY RECOVERY to me after reading their online reviews. After being scammed, I was 50/50 about everything because of trust issues. Today marks seven months since I was conned by some online broker who claimed to help me through my process.Alpha key came to my aid and restored back my joy and happiness by recovering almost everything taken from me reach out to them today and be a living witness of their good work .
WhatsApp : +15714122170
Signal : +15403249396
the pattern recognition from experienced people is the underrated part
they've seen 50 versions of your company already
the feedback that stings is usually the most accurate
congrats on the pre-seed interest . what was the single most surprising thing you heard across those 200 conversations?
Can’t really go deeper publicly yet, but a few conversations genuinely shifted my perspective.
Hi! Tell us more about your experience in promoting your product, where you looked for investors, and what problems you encountered?
Still figuring a lot of that out honestly, so probably too early for me to give useful advice publicly. Most of it has just been experimenting, conversations, and learning in real time while building.
Excited to see the subscription launch!How has feedback from early users influenced your product tweak so far?
Hard to talk about specifics publicly right now, but a lot of the product direction has definitely come from repeated user behavior and conversations.
Interesting how fundraising conversations often end up being more about long-term thinking, positioning, and judgment than the actual product itself. That part usually doesn’t get talked about enough.
Appreciate that. That part surprised me much more than I expected honestly.
Good that you picked up on that.
Yeah, most people only see the surface - the real game is in those longer-term decisions and judgment calls.
Yeah, definitely starting to realize that more now.
This comment was deleted 19 days ago.