[aristofun]

> why would I need an investor when everything already works and makes a profit?

To scale up and make 1000x profit.

Nobody cares about your brilliant idea or even nice looking prototype until you have proven you can make money with it.

Just too risky for investors in current economy.

And education, team etc while may look irrelevant are actually more correlated with future success than details of startup idea etc.

[Raiev]

Investors aren’t interested in ideas, aren’t interested in people, they don’t want to take risks — the person you described is not an investor. I can put my money in a bank — it’s the same thing. They don’t want to take risks because the times are unstable?

1) but was it any different in stable times? 2) I’ve looked at projects that got funding — almost any AI project with a dumb idea raises millions, but that’s not risk — that’s a safe and stable project. 3) for real investors, the emergence of a huge number of new technologies multiplied by global economic shifts is a great opportunity — new markets appear and old ones are being redistributed. It doesn’t get any better than this.

[aristofun]

Generally speaking, yes, real investors are heartless wolves. Whenever banks have better deal - they go to bank.

Investing in a bunch of smart ambitious dudes is already an extremely risky endeavor.

But its a spectrum, not black and white.

When money is cheap (aka “good” times) more investors are ready for more risky investments. When money is expensive - less.