Man, I must have been a real idiot to not get a VC to say yes in 2016. Worth noting that it seemed, at the time, like there was less interest in seed rounds (especially after Twitter's decline) and more in Series A,B, etc.

I know I am naive, but to me it looked like:

X Money From VCs => Y (discounts to users/deals with businesses to "start using my product") => High sales => Repeat (Series A/B...)