Leading a round is easier when the company has already earned pull from the people closest to the work.
Look for natural expansion
The first sign of a strong application is that users want to bring it into adjacent tasks without being pushed. That usually means the product solved one thing well enough to earn the next job.
In AI, that expansion can happen from drafting to routing, or from summarizing to deciding. The product gets more valuable as the workflow widens.
The team has to explain the path
We want founders who can describe the customer, the buying motion, and the reason the product gets stronger over time. If the answer is hand-wavy, the round is not ready to lead.
Conviction should feel like a sequence of clear steps, not a leap of faith.