{
  "id": 2057701,
  "title": "Investors aren’t ghosting you, they’re reading you",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/20/investors-arent-ghosting-you-theyre-reading-you",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-08-20T01:30:44.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "e27",
    "slug": "e27",
    "url": "https://e27.co/investors-arent-ghosting-you-theyre-reading-you-20260817/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Investors continue to engage with founders, even if it seems they are ignoring them. Morning messages containing a simple question about availability have become a common occurrence, with follow-up messages arriving throughout the day and urgent requests for meetings. The response from founders is consistent: they are no longer in the investment industry and do not make introductions. However, this response is often misconstrued by the senders as a need for a more aggressive approach. This behavior is not unique to a particular group, as it spans investment firms and operating companies across eight countries over a span of three decades. The main issue is not the frequency of requests, but rather the lack of trust. In a tight market, trust has become a form of collateral for capital allocation. The data from PitchBook's 2026 European venture deals illustrates this shift, showing that founders with prior experience command a significantly higher median deal size compared to first-time founders. Investors are not paying more for this experience, but rather they are investing larger sums upfront with the assurance that they are dealing with a proven entity. Trust has evolved from being a soft variable in the pitch to a hard asset that validates the founder's proposition. Venture capitalists, who are essentially stewards of other people's money, have a defensive instinct by nature. A founder who appears desperate is essentially asking the investor to take on unnecessary risk. The Stanford professor and AI expert Fei-Fei Li raised $230 million for World Labs in September 2024, which grew to a $5 billion valuation by January 2026. This dramatic increase was not due to an exceptional deck, but rather her extensive track record, which included ImageNet, Stanford HAI, and a well-established reputation in the industry. This case demonstrates that trust was the primary factor in the valuation increase, not the content of the presentation. The market has become so tight that investors now evaluate the coherence of a founder's story, references, and history before even meeting them. This shift is not indicative of a virtuous change in investor behavior, but rather a necessity for mitigating risk in a competitive environment. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in Korea, where the emphasis on relationships as a substitute for a standalone case can be detrimental. While relationships can open doors, they cannot sustain them. Trust, on the other hand, is the foundation that allows capital to flow. Not every founder will be successful in securing funding, and timing plays a crucial role in the success of a deal. However, the founders who manage to raise capital quickly in this environment are often those who have already built a strong and legible case, making the pursuit of investment a more natural progression. The key question for founders in this market is whether they are providing enough clarity for investors to trust them without having to absorb additional risk.",
  "summary": "Every morning, the same message arrives. “Hi David, hope you’re doing well. Can I ask you something quick?” No context. No deck. Sometimes no name. By evening there are three more, each slightly more urgent than the last, culminating in calendar invites for meetings nobody agreed to. The answer is always the same: I’m not […] The post Investors aren’t ghosting you, they’re reading you appeared…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}