> They look for signals before hard metrics.

Honestly, a lot of times a VC will turn you down and cite metrics, but in reality it's not the reason they're not investing. It's just a much easier and less offensive thing to use as a reason for passing (definitely easier than something like "we don't think you're impressive enough to pull this off" or "your product is crappy").

So they'll say "oh your unit economics aren't attractive" to you... But other companies have raised tons of money and maybe even made it all the way to IPO without attractive unit economics.