What Investors Learn When They Watch You Talk To Customers

Selling your pitch to an investor is one thing. Showing that you understand how to sell your product to customers is another.

Amy Cheetham, partner at Costanoa Ventures, sometimes watches founders talk to prospective customers as part of her diligence. Those conversations can reveal how well they understand the problem they’re solving, whether they can absorb feedback and how effectively they communicate with the people they hope will buy what they’re building.

In this episode, Amy explains what she looks for in those conversations, why learning to sell matters for founders, and how distribution can become a moat for AI startups.

We also discuss what makes a strong early-stage narrative, how founders without an existing VC network can start building investor relationships, and a simple seven-day experiment for testing an idea with prospective customers.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GkTaPQ02NG8

RUNTIME 46:20

EPISODE BREAKDOWN

(1:41) Costanoa "will invest really as early as you can imagine."

(5:33)  ”It's not just fundraising as a skill. We're understanding how founders sell to customers.”

(21:38) If you can't explain it, you can't sell it

(29:58) In the application layer, distribution is the moat

(34:50) "My founder archetype has always been domain experts."