[muzani]

You ask the VCs for feedback. Being turned down isn't rejection, it's a data point. Do it early. Don't "practice" on people who don't know what they're talking about.

Often friends aren't simply polite, they just don't have the experience. They haven't invested in things that fail... heck, many won't even know a guy who invested in a failure. And when they do, it's a single data point and they'll come to some dumb conclusion like "it was losing money," as if every successful startup wasn't.