Which successful business are you talking about? OP's business is clearly promising, but if it needs $2M to keep going, success is clearly still ahead. For LP

Which successful business are you talking about? OP's business is clearly promising, but if it needs $2M to keep going, success is clearly still ahead. For LPs trusting a VC with their cash, successful means the company growing 10x in the next seven years. That VC's conviction that the ability to hustle is between where OP is and 10x is something you could disagree about, but I'd say it's somewhat less arbitrary than forking over $2M at just the data given. Maybe different financing tools would allow for different definitions of success, and different guesses about what the OP needs to get there. I'd like to see someone weigh in on debt financing options, which I don't know enough about. But nobody is abusing young minds here.