A letter from an investor to an entrepreneur

I'm pasting a copy of this above my development screen. ...with the line "forget investors for the while and get building!" in bold.

That's a reasonable sentiment, but only up to a point. What I read between the lines was, "You don't really understand the investment process yet, or where you need to be to begin looking for investment. Since you don't have any traction or a convincing team, you're not ready to be thinking about this."

If only all investors were this candid and polite.

Why would you want to get investment w/o a working prototype? It only costs 2-3K to have a freelancer to code it up for you.

Without a working prototype you are just pitching an idea, which means that it'll be next to impossible to find an investor, and if you do find one, you'll have to give away the farm for a tiny amount of money.

Every non-technical founder without a working prototype needs to read this.