Who needs marketing when the VC can get their entire portfolio to buy your product.
VCs are the best advertising.
Leaving aside for the moment yesterday advertising and marketing are very different functions (advertising is easy, marketing is hard);
If your target customers are "VC funded companies" then sure, getting in bed with as many VCs as possible is certainly one marketing approach (and probably a good one.)
Certainly you're are a lot of products targeted at businesses who are flush with cash and eager for kit like fancy chairs.
The important part of marketing is knowing who your potential customers are, and the best way for them to get to know you.
>> But from now on, I'm either gonna be a successful founder, or I'm not. And if I'm not, I'll have to deal with having broken with the expectations that people had of me.
Don't worry, they expected you to fail. They hoped you'd succeed, but expected failure. Statistically most businesses fail, and failure rates are faster when your customers are VCs not users.
I say this as encouragement, not criticism. Accepting that failure is (by far) the most likely outcome is both realistic and freeing. The anxiety of failure is gone.
Frankly, your lack of marketing experience would worry me. Without the ability to reach users (much less customers) how can you do anything but fail? New businesses are not bounded by technical ability (especially in the age of AI) they are bounded by Marketing.