If you can't communicate that you are on to an actual win before the cash runs out that's failure, pure and simple.
I've seen more than a few of these 'oh, if only we had more money we'd have surely made it' or even 'the shareholders killed our company by refusing to invest any more' but that's in all of the cases that I've seen simply a company that is on life support from day #1 but refusing to admit the reality of the situation: that it's time to move on.
Been there, done that, and I totally sympathize with how it feels but coming up with a realistic time-to-market and an actual working setup is part and parcel of success, the lack thereof is highly correlated with failure and/or acquihires.
VCs don't have a set timeframe for your success, you set that timeframe yourself when you go and ask for money in the first place. There are some exceptions to the rule (Cisco comes to mind) but in general this is just another form of failure. Getting funding is to get someone to write a lottery ticket, they are under no obligation to provide more funding than that particular time and failure to raise more money from existing investors or new ones is strongly correlated with an inability to admit to failure and/or pivot fast enough that you can still land on your feet. This sort of introspection is a massive advantage for founders that are capable of doing that, and a huge hindrance for those that believe so strongly in their vision that they can not depart from their tracks until they hit the wall.
I've seen more than a few of these 'oh, if only we had more money we'd have surely made it' or even 'the shareholders killed our company by refusing to invest any more' but that's in all of the cases that I've seen simply a company that is on life support from day #1 but refusing to admit the reality of the situation: that it's time to move on.
Been there, done that, and I totally sympathize with how it feels but coming up with a realistic time-to-market and an actual working setup is part and parcel of success, the lack thereof is highly correlated with failure and/or acquihires.
VCs don't have a set timeframe for your success, you set that timeframe yourself when you go and ask for money in the first place. There are some exceptions to the rule (Cisco comes to mind) but in general this is just another form of failure. Getting funding is to get someone to write a lottery ticket, they are under no obligation to provide more funding than that particular time and failure to raise more money from existing investors or new ones is strongly correlated with an inability to admit to failure and/or pivot fast enough that you can still land on your feet. This sort of introspection is a massive advantage for founders that are capable of doing that, and a huge hindrance for those that believe so strongly in their vision that they can not depart from their tracks until they hit the wall.