[brk]

This works when your product is something that is B2C or a very B2B direct-sale/SaaS kind of thing. It does not work as well, IME, when you are selling something more enterprise-y or selling through a channel, where the social media and viral marketing approaches basically do not work.

[gumby]

We are doing an enterprise startup and as we call people in our network to see if they could use it, a few have called VC buddies and said, "Hey we're seriously looking at this product, it's really cool and we know these guys too. They haven't raised any money yet so you should look at them". This has cause us to accelerate our pitch-deck-writing.

Lest you think this is some kind of humblebrag, this hasn't turned into any investment yet. Just giving a scenario under which it could work.

It's in these enterprise folks' interest for us to have investment as it reduces their risk in adopting our product.