Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’ve faced the same thing — there are no real investors out there, not in the sense of those who take risks and make their living from it. I registered on OpenVC and completed their form — the system gave me 27 out of 100 points. That’s how investors evaluate projects: not by studying the idea, but based on standard template parameters. This is just one example, but others work the same way — “how many people are on the team,” “what’s your education,” and so on.

They don’t care about pre-seed at all — only ready-made projects that already bring in money. I may not be an expert in investing, but honestly, why would I need an investor when everything already works and makes a profit?

What you said about unicorns is also true. I believe my project has huge potential — for now, it’s just my opinion, but I’ve already spent about €1200–1500 on the prototype and around 1000 hours on the mathematical model, presentations, videos, and website. I know some will laugh at that number — I used to think it would take €30,000 through an investor just to build early-stage prototype. I was wrong.

But at some point, I realized: I don’t need an investor. I can handle this myself. AI helped a lot too — it sped up many processes.