Pretty much every large tech company you've ever heard of was VC backed originally. Facebook is a recent example with a couple of the VCs putting in 500 millio

Pretty much every large tech company you've ever heard of was VC backed originally. Facebook is a recent example with a couple of the VCs putting in 500 million in a later round (see http://fortune.com/2011/01/11/timeline-where-facebook-got-its-funding/ http://fortune.com/2011/01/11/timeline-where-facebook-got-it...) Also see more recent examples with fairly capital intensive companies like Uber and Lyft. The odds of getting tens of millions of dollars in the very first round is unlikely. But that's also an unreasonable ask by unproven founders: you'd need to show that you have some clue what you're doing with smaller amounts in the earlier rounds... Apple got <$1m from their first investor.