But for pure software businesses my answer to your final paragraph would be "OK, so maybe you just bootstrap the business with a few good people and skip the VC part". If you aren't hiring hundreds of staff or buying up expensive cloud resources like they're about to run out regardless of how inefficient your product is, how many software startups could get by just fine with a real business model that actually makes money and some steady growth? Who says you have to have a pitch deck, a huge cash injection based on hope and high variance VC investment models, and one hand tied behind your back with investors holding the strings until the Big Exit(TM) or, more likely, the funding runs out before you have actually built a sustainable business and everything just gets shut down?