The reason this is so confusing is that investors outright lie to themselves and everyone else about it. They pretend to invest based on product vision or found

The reason this is so confusing is that investors outright lie to themselves and everyone else about it. They pretend to invest based on product vision or founder traits but it's almost universally untrue. Investors actually invest based on their ability to justify their investment to their LPs, peers, and themselves if it fails. The fear of loss drives most people, and if you have traction they can say "Hey, it's not my fault, they had traction!" and if you have pedigree "Hey, it's not my fault, they went to Stanford/MIT/Harvard!" So, there are essentially just two routes: 1) traction 2) pedigree. If you don't have pedigree, then you need traction. And even if you have pedigree, at some point you're going to need traction anyway. Of course it's usually easier to get traction with funding but there's a reason so many pedigreed founders fail, and it's because they can't game the system indefinitely. There are exceptions to this rule but it's much easier to get traction than it is to find an investor that has genuine conviction about your startup.