Forty-three investor meetings. No term sheet. Founder calls it a tough market.

It's not the market. It's that every one of those meetings was a performance review the founder held for themselves.

The raise is not a numbers game. It's a qualification game. Most founders don't qualify investors at all. They answer questions. They update the deck. They follow up. They log calls in a CRM and watch the pipeline fill up with people who were never going to write a check.

Investors who are going to move tell you something real within two conversations. Everyone else is keeping their options open at your expense.