So much of this seems to just be a misunderstanding of how venture capital works. Like, yes, obviously they want your pitch to minimize flashy and showy and max

So much of this seems to just be a misunderstanding of how venture capital works. Like, yes, obviously they want your pitch to minimize flashy and showy and maximize real numbers like customer count, average spend, and market size. I may have a low opinion of venture capitalists but at the end of the day they're not complete idiots. They're operating with a known framework, they're trying to maximize their own returns, and the only way to know if that will happen is to know hard numbers (like how many customers you have, how much money you have in the bank, how quickly you spend money), all the hype and sales charisma is not going to help you, and if that's your entire presentation to investors they're going to tell _other_ investors not to waste their time talking to you. The reason you're getting advice to minimize hype and showmanship and maximize hard numbers is because when you get into those investor meetings they're going to cut off hype and showmanship and ask you to just tell them the numbers. This isn't some "make life easier for YC and make every startup fit into a box" thing, it's just how investor pitches work.