"Having a working product" is often "too late to invest" in startups. It's just part of the culture. If you want to invest in somewhere that actually makes pizzas, you can buy an Italian restaurant in any city in the country.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/12/05/early-vent... : in some sense, the real product, the hugely profitable one, was "the idea of a pizza company".

Or, if we look closer, the idea of a packaging company. They did indeed raise over $400m actual cash. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zume-inc/company_fin...