In my experience, your point 1 is quite true, but not totally. I have seen that VC's are very open to companies which will eventually die without funding. But in that case, they are most interested in an elite team (this need not be previous experience - just some metric which makes you 'top 10' - whatever you define and justify that to be). So its either; make it sound like you have an elite team, or not need the money. or...

One of the best things I have seen to convince investors, assuming this is your first raise or seed round, is showing them 'interviews' with customers or potential customers - we have made that a central theme at Rinocloud - to do as much 20 minute Skype calls with current and potentials users - showing these to investors has been a massive success.