Let me put this into financial terms. Currently your team is 'fundamentally' worthless (in market terms it can be quite valuable). Despite being well-funded,

Let me put this into financial terms. Currently your team is 'fundamentally' worthless (in market terms it can be quite valuable). Despite being well-funded, it has no market in which it can make money. The investors who are putting a dollar value on it are mistaken, because its fundamental value is $0. (There is a mismatch between its valuation and its fundamental value.) The investors are idiots. (By comparison, they probably wouldn't invest in many very valuable startups at the seed stage, again, because they're idiots.) Well all right, you can get blank checks. Now you just need to add some value to the business. So you're writing a check of your own. You're writing this check: https://imgur.com/a/QnTgb https://imgur.com/a/QnTgb And, ideally, will use it to pay for $1 billion in value: the new amount your team will be worth. The thing is, you can't really get anyone to take your check. "I Just want to pay $0 and get $1 billion in value. Why is this so hard?" Put in these terms, can you think of any reasons it might be hard? (The actual reason is that the market misprices ideas, and although the market prices them at $0, you cannot buy them for zero: the market does not 'clear'.)