[7Figures2Commas]

> And part of why we failed (besides obviously being cash strapped) was the early validation that we were lacking (from a customer side, but also from an investor/VC side).

If you lack customer validation, you don't have a business. Period. Beyond the seed stage, venture firms are investing to scale nascent businesses. Without customer validation, you aren't going to be able to raise a meaningful amount of capital from investors. Put simply, investor validation is a function of customer validation.

The great thing about customer validation is that you don't need lots of money to get in front of customers, and sometimes you don't even need a finished product at all. No VC is going to do this legwork for you.