I Reported The World’s Worst Financials To My VC’s For 15 Quarters Straight. Zero Revenue. Zero Edits. Here’s What Followed...

Like clockwork the emails would arrive:

“Please upload your quarterly financials.”

I didn’t think twice.
I’d “copy / paste” exactly what our accountants gave me.
Plain and simple:
We burned through [insert 5 figures].
We made zero revenue.

Quarter after quarter.
From 2020 through 2023.
Same story. Boiled down:

Even in December 2023, after I shared an update on a product pivot, the Managing Partner at one of our VC funds (with her GP, Principal, and legal counsel cc’d) asked:

Within 5 minutes, I replied-all:

Unflinchingly.
Out of muscle memory.

Was it embarrassing?
Excruciatingly.

Did it occur to me to hedge?
Not once.

And not because I’m a saint.
(I hid a few report cards from my parents as a kid)

I wasn’t being noble.
I was doing my job.

I thought I’d raised $4.2M in seed capital to try my best to deliver “venture-worthy 10x returns” to our investors.
Ideally b/t 2030-2033.
Knowing most likely, I’d run out of capital and shut down by 2025.

A path I thought we all agreed to, the second that wire hit the bank.

This is what I thought venture capital-backed startup journey boiled down to:

A decade-long Squid Game.
A founder as lead problem solver.
Solving an Impossible Puzzle.
Which…by definition…required a sh*t ton of time and money.

(Side note: it wasn’t until mid-2024 that I realized the “sh*t ton of time” part wasn’t just about the product evolution. It was about mine. I had to grow into someone capable of metabolizing inhuman levels of pain and suffering “with glee” as Jensen Huang put it.)

I thought venture-backed startup founders were signing for a “Delta Force Long Walk” that could last a decade unless the founder decided to tap out.
 
I thought the only rule on time was this:

You must crack the Impossible Puzzle at the exact moment the market needed it.
Otherwise, even if you solve it, you don't win.
Alan Turing style.

I thought there were only two possible outcomes:

1. You run out of money before solving it.

2. You solve it…and the outcome is so powerful it retroactively “justifies” every quarter of inhuman pain and suffering endured.

And I knew (because every VC makes this clear) that there was only one expected outcome:

This is the Overton Window I thought I was operating inside:

For context:

The Overton Window is a framework for understanding which behaviors or ideas are considered acceptable in any given system.

In politics, it governs policy.
In startups, it governs survival.

For example:
“You couldn’t pay me to sleep in a stranger’s home instead of a hotel…”
→ Airbnb.

“You wouldn’t catch me dead sending a stranger to pick up my teen daughter…”
→ Uber.

In other words: you can act as freely as the applicable structure around you allows.

Turns out, I wasn’t just operating inside the “venture backed founder” Overton Window.

I was moving it.

And I didn’t fully realize it — until about a month ago.

The “awakening” began with a letter from our largest investors, recommending a formal shutdown of the company and a return of investor capital.

1. The Venture-Backable Founder Archetype Shift: From Top Dog to Underdog

~All startup capital went to white male Stanford / Harvard / Wharton technical founders before I entered the scene in 2020 when ~2% shifted to other founder archetypes...

There I stood in San Francisco, as a solo, first-time, non-technical female founder.
No co-founder.
No Stanford/Harvard/Wharton degree.
No prior exit.
No traction.

Still, I raised $4.2M.
Mostly because I got lucky.

2020–2021 was peak season for three red-hot VC trends:

• Funding “overlooked” founders (let’s just be honest…attempted deal flow arbitrage)

• Fintech

• Creator economy

I happened to sit at the center of all three.

Our largest checks came from:

• A global bank’s female founder funding initiative

• A $1B+ AUM fintech-focused institutional VC firm

• A freshly minted institutional seed VC fund to back women

• A spinout seed fund to back overlooked founders in overlooked U.S. cities

At the time, I believed I earned it through track record.
In retrospect, I earned it by being at the right place, right time.

2. The Investor Communication Shift: From Polished To The Unvarnished Play-By-Play Ledger

Here’s what I didn’t do:
Polish, hedge, or hide.

Here’s what I did:
Executed. Failed. Pivoted. Got lawsuit threats. Rebuilt. Repeated.
And shared the play by play with our investors.

Twelve months in, I was urged to hire a COO.
I said: To professionalize a fetus of a company? No.
(I wish I’d said it with more grace.)

I was urged to outsource product to a dev shop.
I said: Great idea since I don’t code. Yes.
Then realized: Never again because I spent money and learned nothing.
And rebuilt. From scratch. Multiple times.

I didn’t know how to perform boardroom poise while bleeding out in a trench.
(Though I do now.)

I sent over 1,500 emails.
Frenetic but transparent.
More than two years of timestamped chaos.

Every failure. Every hypothesis. Every micro-inflection point.

I didn’t hide my confusion.
I publicly logged it. In real time.

And when our lead investors finally tapped out, they made one thing clear:

Because I gave them no room to.

3. The Shift In Founder-Investor Accountability And Power Dynamics

23 months after investing at paper napkin idea stage, our lead seed VC’s sent a formal shutdown letter.

So formal that I knew it was already signed off on by their LPs: a very big deal.

They encouraged me to return the capital.
They offered severance.
They disengaged.

I declined the shutdown.
I declined the severance.
I kept building.
And delivering play-by-play near daily status updates.

Twice in 2024, they offered to forfeit their shares — voluntarily — reiterating their perspective on the company as a lost cause.

I declined.

By then, the market was turning.
Regulatory tailwinds were accelerating.
AI was equipping founders like Iron Man suits.

And I had 4+ years of receipts.

4. The Overton Window of Pain And Suffering

For a long time, I couldn’t understand it.

Why my VCs who once had the highest conviction
grew distant. Cold. Repulsed.
In less than 2 years.

Then I realized:
They had never seen the full cost of this journey before.

When they saw it in my play-by-play almost daily updates, they mistook it for incompetence.

I brought them into the meat factory.
Not just the financials.
The grief.

And they couldn’t hold it.

Because the Overton Window — until now — was this:

But I didn’t wait.
I didn’t clean anything up.
I shared it in real time.

I made the pain visible to our investors.
And inevitably felt by our investors.

That’s the crux of my Overton Shift.
The founder’s suffering, no longer quarantined.

Slaughterhouse lights, flipped on.
Investor conviction, flipped off.

Conclusion: If you’re not willing to witness the slaughter, why not avoid early-stage all together?

This is not a call for pity.
It’s a call for action.

What if the gruesome early stage founder journey is not the problem?
What if investors who thrive only when shielded from it are?

How can someone glorify resilient founders, then recoil at the necessary cost of their Becoming?

The result of recoiling:
Founders are taught to hide their suffering.
Delay their honesty.
Polish their updates.
Perform stability.
All to survive the next board meeting.

Enough.

Here’s what I’ll leave you with:

If you’re a founder:
Document the day-by-day play-by-play.
Take control of your narrative and share openly.
Not for optics.
For your own proof of work.
And so no one can claim otherwise.

If you’re an investor:
Instead of telling founders “if you don’t want to play the game, don’t raise VC money”
Honor the Becoming. Stay in the room longer.
Watch the whole thing, not just the highlight reel.
If you're not willing to witness the slaughter, why are you writing any founder’s earliest checks?

If you’re a seed VC system architect:
Surrender to a shifted Overton Window.
Encourage one that expects the fog.
That makes space for the in-between.
That stops mistaking transparency for incompetence.

This system won’t change because one founder refuses.

It will change when embracing how “Legendary” meat is actually made becomes the norm.

And if that happens,
maybe more founders will be able to endure
their Long Walk through the fire,
that ultimately forged every last one we call Great.

Kaeya