Back in 2010, I was starting an AI music generation company. Today we’d call it a Generative AI startup — back then there was no catch-all term. As a result, raising money was all but impossible. I pitched probably 50 investors for my seed round. 49 said no or outright ignored me. Most (if not all) just did not believe that AI could be creative.
I got lucky. A single investor at a single fund — a great guy named Mike, at the spinout fund Cambridge Enterprise — believed in the idea, and believed in me, and invested. Without Mike, I would have given up. And, given that we sold the business to ByteDance and Generative AI proceeded to go mainstream, I would have hugely regretted it.