For early-stage companies, venture capital funding is often romanticised as a gold standard. A sign that your company means something and is on the right path. But we raised £20 million without a single venture capitalist. That meant no Sand Hill Road or time-consuming pitch decks at partner meetings, which have no guarantee of any success. Above all, it meant we didn’t have to give up a single board seat to people who have never built anything.
Instead, more than 70 UK investors backed us because they believed in what we’re building – not because a VC brand told them to. And there are two hard truths here.
The first is that most VCs have never built or successfully exited a company, shipped a product or sat on a support call at 11 pm, wondering why the integration is broken. They have mainly come up through banking, consulting and analyst programmes, meaning they provide opinions instead of real-world experience.
The second is, in 2026, in the age of AI, their model is dying. Here, I outline five reasons why, before explaining how we used our own AI agent to raise the money.
Five reasons the model is dying
