A rant for VCs. Or a thesis. Whichever funds faster

I was told by an investment banker turned founder that building a PLG motion would be the easy part. He sells sport shirts in Berlin now. I think about him often.

Building a PLG motion in a startup is hard. Really hard. PLG with a novel AI adaptation at its core is even harder. And when I say novel, I do not mean "nobody has done it quite this way." I mean nobody has done it. At all. Ever.

But here is the thing. Nail the self-serve PLG motion. Build the operating system that holds it all together. Ship the most advanced domain-specific neurosymbolic AI cores anyone has seen.

Do that, and the only things between you and a Year 5 unicorn are a marketing budget and the right market timing.

Look at the companies who cracked it.

Figma. 70% of enterprise deals originated from self-serve PLG signups, according to their S-1 filing. Built browser-native from day one, turning every shared link into a growth channel. Sales team only layered on later for enterprise.

Monday.com. Both co-founders are engineers who "didn't like selling to customers," so they were "forced to build a product that automatically converts." The majority of Monday is still self-serve, with sales-led revenue on top. Pure PLG first, sales assist second.

Notion. Two founders moved to Kyoto because they could not afford San Francisco. Relaunched in 2018. Hit $3M revenue in 2019, six years after founding. Now $600M ARR, 100M+ users, $10B+ valuation. Enterprise came later through bottoms-up adoption.

These three companies took 5 to 6 years to crack PLG. Pebbles Ai is hellbent on doing it in Year 2 to 3.

Then there are the other things. Go too early without a moat? You win at first. You lose later. Go too late? The market moved on without you. Go without the right team? Customers pour in and you collapse under your own weight. Wait too long to launch? Faster competition takes the brand name.

The trick is finding the right moment. Not too early. Not too late. With the right people. With the right foundation. With enough scar tissue to know the difference.

Case in point. I listened to some of our early investors. They were putting a fair amount of pressure on me to start selling the product. I caved despite knowing deep in my heart that we were too early.

Despite that, we got our first paying companies. Double the industry close rates. And surprisingly good satisfaction.

But I was doing everything. Six consecutive months of Thursdays and Fridays sitting with customers, teaching them to use the operating system, taking feedback, and absorbing emotional abuse because things broke.

The platform was still in beta if you were honest about it. Founder-led sales is great until you realise the founder is becoming the product, the support team, the DPO, and the person trying to remember their own name.

In the end, I had enough primary data to build PLG exactly how our customers would want it. I stopped selling and focused on product. Yes, we lost customers. But we got what we needed. And in the nick of time, because my team was getting frustrated that I did not have time for product and AI research.

In total: 100+ hours of primary research. 30+ customer interviews. 10+ focus groups. And every person who said no to our face.

Looking back, I have no regrets. But founder-led sales scales only for enterprise. The product needs to sell itself for everyone else.

I am grateful our angels pushed me into the fire. I came out with burns, white hairs, and the exact blueprint for what to build next. Lesson learned. But next time I smell smoke, I will bring a fire extinguisher instead of walking in barefoot.

Internal timing is only half the battle. The other half is who is willing to fuel the engine once you have built it.

There is a reason I joked about European investors and baby unicorns in my other blog article, "The unvarnished truth about building a category-defining AI company."

US VCs tend to invest when they see a PLG engine ready for lift-off. The early PMF signals. The architecture. The team. They fund the fuel before the car is driving because they have seen this pattern before.

Figma raised $18M before a single dollar of revenue. Monday.com raised $34M. The early VCs who backed them made extraordinary returns. They understood that there are other ways to identify the right pick. Not just MRR. Radical concept, I know.

We have MRR. But that is not the point. The point is that UK and European VCs, in my experience, need more proof. More traction. More revenue. More time. It is a different risk philosophy.

From what I hear from other frounders, UK VCs even have perfected a special language where "let us stay in touch" means no, "interesting thesis" means no, and "we love what you are doing" also means no. But somehow, "Go on then" means yes.

US VCs place greater emphasis on product-market fit. European and UK VCs place greater emphasis on early financials and growth metrics.

European VCs do not fear risk. They fear explaining a 100x return to their LPs. Mostly because it is hard to look humble pulling up to the AGM in a soft-top Ferrari.

At early stage, European founders are expected to hit upper-echelon metrics while also building the tech behind the category-leading unicorn. The hours simply do not exist. Every VC meeting, follow-up, questionnaire, and DD request are hours away from sales, marketing, and product.

In the US, once a founder is pattern-matched as the next Figma, Monday, or Notion, the round closes in weeks, not months. The founder gets the hours back. The company compounds on them.

One founder who raised in both markets said it best. Mathilde Collin, CEO of Front: "US funds invest in case your company succeeds. In Europe, they invest because your company succeeded." I have nothing to add. She said it better than I ever could.

US average fund size is $282M. UK is $168M. EU is $128M. With those numbers, European VCs are not cautious. They are mathematically constrained. It is hard to swing big when your bat is half the size. The US also has 8x the growth-stage capital of the UK and EU, where VCs are concentrated on early-stage.

That means European startups often have no choice but to turn to American markets to raise growth rounds post-Series A. And in 2026, it is not just Series A. EU and UK founders are flying to the US for Seed.

By the time European VCs are comfortable, the valuation is 3 to 5x higher and the early multiple is gone. Part mentality. Part math. Both working against the UK and EU.

And don't forget, hockey stick growth requires a PLG engine. PLG needs fuel to run. Fuel requires capital. Capital requires proof. Proof that can only be generated with capital. See the problem?

So founders look elsewhere for capital. The US. The Middle East. APAC. Or they bootstrap, like Notion did. A year later, VCs are surprised when they no longer need investment, or when the valuation is at a premium.

"Why is the valuation so high?" Because you were not there when it was low.

This is a flywheel problem, not a chicken-and-egg one. Mentality and math spin each other. European caution built smaller funds. Smaller funds reinforced European caution. Reversing it takes one fund, one outlier, and one 100x return.

Someone has to be the hand that pushes it the other way. Somewhere in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, or Kyiv there is a partner at a VC fund who has the chops to become the next European Marc Andreessen.

For those VCs that are interested, how do you identify the outlier before the financials show it?

Easy. Stop looking for the car already on the road. Start looking at the garage. Look at the engineering. The team assembling it. The chassis underneath. The engine inside. The end product printed on the wall.

A car already on the road is not an investment opportunity. It is carry you will never collect.

Speaking of which. There is a garage people are whispering about. It is called Pebbles Ai.

Rumour has it, the garage is run by the top 1% of engineers in Europe. The car is built. The engine performs at a level the market has not seen. Keys in the ignition. Driving gloves in the lockbox. The driver is a second-time founder. And he is looking for fuel.

The only question is, which VC has the courage to be his gas station, and build the next European unicorn with him?

Written by Emin Can Turan, Founder and Lead Researcher at Pebbles Ai

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