Below are six concise, practical case studies showing how early-stage tech startups (pre-seed → Seed → Series A) typically secured VC funding. Each case includes the startup’s situation, what they did to win investors, key metrics/asks, timeline, and clear lessons you can apply.

1. Marketplace (consumer services)

• Situation: Two founders built an MVP marketplace connecting local service providers with customers in one city. Early traction: 1,200 users, 300 booked jobs, 25% weekly retention.
• What they did: Focused on unit economics (CAC, LTV), tightened supply-side retention, ran paid CAC experiments, and produced a simple dashboard showing growth and margins. Built partnerships with a few local businesses to demonstrate repeat supply.
• Pitch focus for VCs: Scalable growth play, defensibility in local network effects, path to 10x TAM by geographic rollouts.
• Ask & metrics: Seed round $1M–$2M to expand to 5 new cities; runway 12–18 months; projected CAC payback < 6 months.
• Timeline: MVP → 6 months of traction → YC or accelerator demo → seed round in month 9–12.
• Lesson: VCs funded them because early metrics showed repeat usage and unit economics that improved with scale — not just raw downloads.

2. B2B SaaS (vertical software)

• Situation: Technical founder + domain expert built a vertical SaaS for compliance automation used by 4 pilot customers (paying) in a regulated industry.
• What they did: Converted pilots to paid contracts, documented case studies showing time saved (40–60% reduction in manual work) and ROI. Built a sales playbook and churn forecasts. Hired a VP Sales candidate and had an initial pipeline of 50 qualified leads.
• Pitch focus for VCs: High gross margins, predictable ARR growth, low churn, clear go-to-market play and land-and-expand motion.
• Ask & metrics: Seed $2M for product hardening, 2–3 sales hires, and marketing to reach $1.2M ARR in 12–18 months. Key metrics: MRR growth rate 10–15% month-over-month, gross margins 80%+, NRR > 110%.
• Timeline: 12 months from idea to seed; leveraged references from pilot customers to accelerate term sheets.
• Lesson: Paying customers and measurable ROI are the strongest signals for VCs in B2B SaaS — turn pilot success into repeatable GTM execution.

3. Deep-tech / AI startup

• Situation: Team of researchers with a novel model architecture validated on Benchmark datasets and a working API used by 2 enterprise partners for POC.
• What they did: Focused on IP, reproducible benchmarks, cost-to-serve analysis, and productized an API with SLAs. Built a roadmap showing model improvements and cost optimization (inference latency and compute).
• Pitch focus for VCs: Competitive advantage from model quality + defensible data advantages, enterprise POCs showing clear business value, path to product-market fit in 1–2 verticals.
• Ask & metrics: Pre-seed $1–1.5M for engineering hires and compute; Seed $5M+ to scale infrastructure and sales. Key metrics: POC conversion rate, latency/accuracy improvements, enterprise willingness to pay.
• Timeline: 18 months from research to funded seed; leveraged technical papers, reproducible demos, and enterprise letters-of-intent.
• Lesson: For deep-tech, VCs look for credible IP, reproducible results, and early enterprise validation that justify the capital needed to scale compute and sales.

4. Consumer mobile app (network effects)

• Situation: Social app with viral sign-up loops, 500k downloads, 80k weekly active users, but low monetization.
• What they did: Demonstrated strong engagement metrics (DAU/MAU, session length), showed viral coefficient >1 through referral mechanics, and ran focused experiments to increase conversion to a paid tier. Built a clear plan for monetization (subscriptions + partnerships).
• Pitch focus for VCs: Growth engine, network effects, potential for high LTV if monetization improves.
• Ask & metrics: Seed $3–5M to refine product, hire growth & product, and test monetization channels. Key metrics emphasized: DAU/MAU >25%, viral coefficient, retention by cohort, roadmap to LTV 3x CAC.
• Timeline: Rapid growth in 6–9 months → seed interest from growth-stage VCs.
• Lesson: User growth alone isn’t enough — investors need to see credible levers to convert engagement into sustainable revenue and healthy unit economics.

5. Healthcare / digital health (regulated)

• Situation: Clinically-founded startup with an FDA-exempt digital therapeutic and 3 small payer/provider pilots showing improved patient outcomes.
• What they did: Collected clinical outcome data and economic impact (reduced readmissions), built HIPAA-compliant architecture, secured an advisory board of clinicians, and gained letters-of-intent from 2 provider systems for full trials.
• Pitch focus for VCs: Clinical efficacy + reimbursement pathway + regulatory risk mitigation. Emphasized partnerships and legal/regulatory roadmap.
• Ask & metrics: Seed $2–4M to run larger clinical studies and secure payer contracts. Key metrics: clinical effect size, cost-per-patient saved, pilot-to-contract conversion.
• Timeline: 18–24 months including regulatory work; leveraged clinical endorsements to attract healthcare-focused VCs.
• Lesson: In healthcare, clinical evidence, regulatory clarity, and payer/provider relationships are central — VCs fund evidence-backed pathways to reimbursement.

6. Hardware / IoT startup

• Situation: Founders built a robust prototype and shipped 300 units to paying beta customers; BOM cost, yield, and supply chain were documented.
• What they did: Validated product-market fit with paying customers, iterated on hardware reliability, negotiated component supplier relationships, and defined a manufacturing scale plan (cost per unit at scale).
• Pitch focus for VCs: Capital efficiency in bridging hardware production, clear manufacturing roadmap, recurring revenue services (SaaS or consumables) tied to the device.
• Ask & metrics: Seed $2–6M to set up tooling, QA, and initial production run. Key metrics: yield rates, gross margin per unit at scale, reorder rate, and service attach rate.
• Timeline: 12–18 months from prototype to seed with investor interest coming after successful pilot shipments.
• Lesson: Hardware investors want to see solved supply chain/production risks and a service layer that improves gross margins and recurring revenue.

Actionable checklist — what VCs repeatedly looked for across these case studies

1. Early validation: Paying customers, pilots with contracts, or verifiable KPIs (DAU/MAU, ARR, bookings).
2. Unit economics: CAC, LTV, gross margins, churn — show current numbers and projected improvement.
3. Repeatability & GTM: Clear sales / growth playbook with repeatable customer acquisition channels.
4. Team credibility: Founders with domain knowledge and early hires/advisors that fill gaps.
5. Defensible advantage: IP, proprietary data, network effects, regulatory moat, or manufacturing edge.
6. Use of funds: Concrete milestones for the round (12–24 month runway) and what success looks like.
7. Risk mitigation: Show you’ve thought about biggest risks (regulatory, supply chain, scaling costs) and have plans to address them.
8. Metrics to track: Monthly growth rates, retention cohorts, CAC payback, gross margin, runway, burn rate, conversion rates.

If you’d like, I can:

• Turn any of these into a full written investor case (one-pager + slide outline + data table).
• Create a tailored checklist for your specific startup (industry, traction, target round). Which would you prefer?