TLDR;

Q1: Has any of you, or someone you know, without traction, (only with an idea backed up by personal experience, market researches, a good story and minimum viable pitch deck), ever raised funds?

Q2: Am I wasting time&money raising funds at pre-everything (pitch deck) even with proven direct to market background?

🔎 The situation:

Few months ago, I had an idea based on personal experience, observation, trend, and communities data.

While I started building the online strategy, website, funnel, preparing ads etc, I’ve heard about fundraising, and integrated an accelerator program that already helped founders raising money without necessarily having an MVP or proof of demand.

📽️ The background:

I didn’t go to uni neither attend business classes, hence I’m not familiar with traditional “corporate rules” if I may call it like that.

From 6months intensive training and self-taught data driven digital marketer to generating +900k with a team of 5 marketers, my background is made of hands-on skills, with decision-making based on online analytics (from social media, ads, website, etc) to understand and optimize the customer journey.

The main rule I’ve been guided with: Testing, analyzing results, optimize, iterate 🔄

🚧 The problem:

It’s been 4 months now and I feel like I wasted my time and money trying to raise funds and attending stupid events like VivaTech and WebSummit instead of developing my solution and getting customers, which was my initial plan.

But now I’m running out of money, will need to get a job, can’t focus 100% on my startup anymore, didn’t raise funds and didn’t develop my solution either.

❓The questions:

See beginning.

Thanks for reading, for your feedback, and answers.