Is your position based on hands-on experience with finding funding for commercial startups?
First of all,
I do not claim all investors are idiots. If you think I said otherwise, you need to reread my posts. I pointed out that many investors fund projects they know full well will fail because of the positive publicity.
But anyway, yes, I do have practical experience in finding funding for commercial startups, angel investors, and so on. The IT company I ran for a few years originally started in a business incubator. I got the "nine out of ten will fail, but the one will recoup the investment in all ten" from an angel investor, in fact. Mostly, I talked with Finnish investors and other entrepreneurs (mentors). Granted, that was just before the turn of the century, but I don't think people have changed much since then.
I do also know people who work for startups and similar, and have discussed with them the kind of projects they've managed to get external funding for, but those I consider only tentatively reliable (second-hand info).
my experience is that investors are not easely persuaded into handing out money.
Are you sure you're doing it right, then?
The triple-pronged attack of showing the projected figures
if the product/service succeeds, the positive publicity even if the product/service fails, and the opportunities to meet other "notable" people in investor events, is extremely attractive to many investors.
If you think the product/service should stand on its own, you're limiting yourself to a small fraction of all investors only interested in profit
and having sufficient know-how to estimate for themselves the likelihood of the product/service succeeding.
In the end they need to make a return on investment in order not to go out of business themselves.
Yes, but you confuse "profit on their investment
s" with "profit on every investment". The two are completely different, and only the first makes sense long-term, and is why presentation, pretty/handsome PR and sales people, and a people-schmoozer money-hungry CEO makes success much more likely:
appearance rules.