What VCs
Actually Mean

"Love what you're working on, let me run through it and get back to you"

I skimmed your deck for 30 seconds and will never think about this again

"We'd love to stay in touch"

We're passing but don't want to burn the bridge in case you blow up

"We're not leading rounds right now"

We don't have conviction, but if someone else does, we might pile on

"The space is a bit crowded"

We already funded your competitor

"Come back when you have more traction"

No. But we want to seem helpful

"We love the team"

The product isn't working and neither is the business model

"Interesting unit economics"

You're burning cash at an alarming rate

"We need to see a few more months of data"

We're not convinced and probably never will be

"This is a bit early for us"

We think this might fail and don't want to find out firsthand

"We have some concerns about the market size"

This isn't a billion-dollar outcome so we literally cannot care

"Let me introduce you to someone on our platform team"

I'm passing you to someone less important so I don't have to say no directly

"We're going to pass for now"

We're going to pass forever but 'for now' makes it sound temporary

"We really struggled with this one internally"

It took us about 30 seconds to decide no, but we want you to feel respected

"We just don't have bandwidth right now"

We have bandwidth, just not for you

"Keep us posted on your progress"

We want to watch from the sidelines. If you 10x, we'll pretend we were always interested