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When talking to investors, don't try to hide your problems. Investors know every startup is a series of disasters. If you pretend nothing's wrong, they'll assume you're lying. Confident founders are candid.
There's also a more subtle reason not to hide your problems from investors. You'll have much more interesting conversations if you're open about them. Nothing is more convincing to a good investor than seeing a good founder's mind at work.
(Later stage, the most convincing thing is revenue growth. But you'd need something like 18 months of steep revenue growth before a good investor would start to care as much about that graph as about how your mind works.)
Most founders overvalue their pitch and undervalue their brain. You think your deck is great, because you spent so long on it. Whereas your brain, you think, is a noob's. But to experienced investors your deck is <deck> and your noob brain is a fascinating work in progress.
The big mistake teenagers make when trying to seem impressive is trying to seem like adults. Maybe it fools other teenagers. But to adults, they'd seem more impressive if they were good teenagers instead of bad imitation adults.
Similarly, it's more impressive to seem a promising but inexperienced founder than to seem like a bad imitation of one who's already successful.
