Without specific reference to any company, "Convincing an investor to invest in a company which is not, at the present moment in time, either profitable or cash

Without specific reference to any company, "Convincing an investor to invest in a company which is not, at the present moment in time, either profitable or cashflow positive" is not in any way exceptional or unnatural. That's the nature of the game in early stage investing. They're all high-risk companies which, if you simply linearly project out where they are today, will "default to dying" (to use PG's phrasing). Sophisticated investors bet that they can perceive some X factor about the business, the market, or the founders which will cause the business to actually not achieve the default outcome. Usually they lose these bets. Occasionally they bet that two Stanford gradudate students who know nothing about business will nonetheless figure out a terribly difficult CS problem allowing them to unlock money from an oversaturated low-margin business that every smart analyst correctly believes has no future. If you invest in nine $STARUP_WHICH_FAILED_INGLORIOUSLY and one Google you do very well for yourself. To misquote the Wire: "All in the game, yo."