The reason “ideas don’t get funding” is usually (but not always) true is that usually a good idea alone doesn’t mean much. So usually you have to have good idea plus something else the investor feels is a proof point or evidence you can execute.

The clearest of these is that you have already built it, or an MVP of it that is more than just smoke and mirrors, and there’s users and customers.

If you have excellent proof points and actual revenue growth, you could show up with no pants smelling like weed and somebody might fund you. Then they’d call their press people to do an “eccentric genius founder” piece about the person who showed up stoned with no pants and their pitch was that good. That’s cause if your graph goes up and to the right you’re not crazy, you’re “eccentric.”

If you don’t have any proof they fall back on secondary evidence, like credentials and schools and vibes. The latter, yes, often overlaps with cronies.

And unfortunately that by necessity includes most ideas that cost a lot to prototype, which means credentialism and croneyism tends to gate keep fields with a high cost of entry.