[paulmatthijs]

VCs don't want teams, they want business cases that have shown to be scalable.

Do you need your cofounder? Can your business continue without him/her? If so, continue to build out your business. If it's worthy of another round, it will come. If not, you just have a healthy business and you could always focus on a stock buyback program with interest to offer a more instant gratification for your angels/f&f investors. About 99,9999% of business are funded this way.

Everyone's always hoping to score big time, but if a startup grows into a regular business that's a pretty good result. Even a little dividend after ten years beats a liquidation.