VC of the Month October 2026: Investors Reward Proof Over Pitch

What happened

The October 2026 edition of the recurring VC of the Month roundup is a blunt read for anyone raising money. It puts two European funds side by side, Poland's 24Ventures and Amsterdam's Airbridge Equity Partners. Its conclusion is that venture money is still out there, but it now goes to founders who bring clear proof, tight positioning and a close match with a fund's stated thesis.1 The author, founder Violetta Bonenkamp, writes that investors have become more selective and more thesis-driven, and that they have little patience for muddled founder reasoning.1

The two funds sit at different points on the funding path. 24Ventures manages €20 million and backs Polish founders at pre-seed and seed. Its focus areas include enterprise software, SaaS, deeptech, Industry 4.0, vertical AI, AI infrastructure, quantum and cybersecurity.1 Airbridge invests in European technology companies from a €63 million second fund. It writes bigger first cheques and expects more traction.1 Earlier coverage put Airbridge's typical first cheque at €1 million to €5 million.2

The October column is the latest in a series that has said much the same thing all year. Read together, the monthly instalments show a venture market that has been tightening steadily, not in one sudden shift.

The headline numbers hide a narrower market

The column's core argument is that big headline numbers paint a misleading picture for most founders. It cites Dealroom figures showing huge 2026 rounds: OpenAI at $122 billion in late-stage VC, Anthropic at $65 billion in a Series H, and DeepSeek at $7.4 billion in early-stage VC.1 Bonenkamp says these figures make capital look easy to get when it isn't. Money is piling up around companies that already have momentum, brand, distribution or strategic weight. A European founder building B2B workflow software shouldn't read those rounds as a sign that fundraising has got easier.11

Other coverage supports this split. In GeekWire, Seattle investor Nikesh Parekh describes venture capital as having split in two. Record sums go to a small group of AI companies, while most founders find it harder than ever to raise.18 His most striking figure is that the median revenue needed for a Series A has roughly tripled, to about $3.5 million in annual recurring revenue.18 Gian Seehra, a former Octopus Ventures investor turned founder coach, describes the same pattern. Total capital may be rising, but it is going into fewer, larger rounds, and about the same number of startups are raising as before.13

These sources agree on the main point. The market isn't shut, but its top end is now much larger than the rest, and averages say little about what a typical seed-stage company will face.

The tactical playbook: thesis fit as a filter

The October piece's advice centres on what it calls fund fit. Its list of signals includes:

• Thesis now counts for more than charisma.
• Geography still shapes deal flow at pre-seed.
• An AI label isn't enough unless the column can see where AI sits in the workflow and who pays for it.
• B2B revenue models are easier to underwrite than vague consumer ambitions.1

It also warns about "narrative hygiene": unclear positioning causes diligence problems before formal diligence even starts.1 The reasoning is that funds are overwhelmed with inbound pitches and need quick ways to say no. A fuzzy story or a vague customer definition makes that easy.11

The column turns this into a seven-step routine:

1. Write down each fund's geography, sector, stage, cheque size, business-model preference and traction bar.
2. Score your startup against it honestly, and stop pursuing the fund if three of the six criteria don't match.
3. Rewrite your positioning in the investor's own categories.
4. Bring evidence suited to your stage.
5. Study the fund's portfolio.
6. Refer to the fund's public interviews in your outreach.
7. Keep a "rejection bank" so each no tells you something.11

The 90-day plan points the same way. Rewrite your one-line description so it names the customer and the painful job you solve. Be honest about your stage. Gather customer, product and market proof. Build a use-of-funds slide that links money to hires, milestones and time.11

The list of common mistakes is the most useful part. It includes:

• treating meetings, pilots and press coverage as if they were traction
• using AI as decoration
• sending every fund the same pitch
• explaining the technology at length while saying little about customer pain
• hiding weak numbers behind big ambitions11

The August edition, on the Baltic deeptech fund Balnord, gave hardware founders a similar list. It warned against treating patents as a stand-in for customer proof and against glossing over procurement problems.3

Where the advice diverges

The coverage disagrees on how much the founder counts compared with the evidence.

The VC of the Month series puts proof first. Its June instalment said polished storytelling counts for less than visible progress. It said funds want a niche-first wedge, not giant market-size slides.6 October says that even "smart money" no longer puts up with a company's unresolved confusion.11

Seehra disagrees, or at least shifts the emphasis. He says early-stage investing is largely emotional, because there isn't enough data at pre-seed, seed or even Series A to decide on numbers alone.13 He estimates that 80 to 90 percent of the decision comes down to the founder. His advice is practical: audit your own weaknesses, record yourself pitching, tell your real story, and be someone investors want to spend time with.13 He also names a failure he calls "founder talk": explaining features as if the investor were a customer, not someone weighing risk and scale.13

My reading is that the two views are closer than they look. The October column also says founders are now judged on how they behave under uncertainty. That includes whether they think clearly, answer directly and can explain what the next €500,000 or €2 million will buy.11 So the founder still matters. What has changed is how investors judge founders. They read clear, evidence-backed communication as a sign of how someone runs a company, and charisma alone carries less weight. The two camps differ on emphasis, not on the facts.

A second disagreement is harder to settle. The column treats a fund's public profile as a reliable briefing.11 Practitioners on r/venturecapital are more cynical. One argues that a fund's stated thesis is marketing and its portfolio is the truth: a self-described pre-seed fund that hasn't written a cheque under $2 million in 18 months isn't really a pre-seed fund.17 Others suggest asking founders whose companies failed how the investor behaved once things went wrong.17 Founders should treat that as an important correction. Published profiles are a good starting point, but the record of a fund's actual deals is what shows whether the fit is real.

Should you raise venture at all?

The October column mostly assumes the founder will raise venture money and focuses on doing it well. GeekWire asks the earlier question of whether to raise at all. Kirby Winfield of Ascend says founders who aren't fairly confident of reaching $3 million to $5 million in ARR within 18 to 24 months of their first commercial contract probably shouldn't raise venture in 2026.18 Parekh sets out other options: angel rounds that keep control of the timeline, venture debt for companies with real margins, and bootstrapping.18

This fits the series' own warning that money increasingly goes to companies that are already moving.1 If the bar is that high, much of the founder advice comes down to an earlier strategic decision about which kind of capital suits your business.

The founder story behind the advice

Bonenkamp makes clear that she writes from a founder's point of view, drawing on deeptech, education and IP tooling.11 At CADChain, she says, she has long argued that IP protection and compliance belong inside the workflow, and she tells founders in regulated fields to treat them as part of the product story.11 Her Fe/male Switch platform teaches founders through role-play and evidence gathering. She uses that to argue that women and under-networked founders need structure, such as investor mapping, warmer networks and practice settings, more than motivational slogans.11 Her strategic point holds up: founders without insider access can still beat better-connected teams if they match a fund's thesis more closely and bring cleaner evidence.11

The series also shows how investors themselves are changing. May's edition reported that funds are folding AI into sourcing, screening and diligence. Its advice was that pitch materials now need to persuade people and also be easy for machines to read.7 Founders in the coming months should assume their deck will be screened quickly, possibly by software, before a partner reads it closely.

The verdict

The October 2026 column's own summary is the best one: the venture market is stricter, not closed.11 The coverage agrees that capital is concentrated, that bars are rising, and that matching a fund's real behaviour beats sending the same pitch everywhere. It disagrees on how much founder presence counts compared with documented proof. For a founder planning the next quarter, the advice is clear. Work out from a fund's portfolio, not just its marketing, what evidence it rewards. Collect that evidence before you start pitching. And be honest about whether venture capital is the right money for your business at all.