To be fair, though, the "customers" aren't the customers. In modern software companies, you don't sell products to be profitable, you sell them to be plausible

To be fair, though, the "customers" aren't the customers. In modern software companies, you don't sell products to be profitable, you sell them to be plausible. As a software company, your value to a venture investor is much greater than it could possibly be to a potential customer. The objective of the startup is to look plausible until the current round of investors sells their stake to the next round of investors. Part of they way those investors value the company is whether or not they think they can sell the company to a greater set of fools. In the modern software company there is only one customer, the next early stage investor. I can assure you, your execs know how to pitch to them, otherwise they wouldn't have received their A round.