“Tech bors reinvent trains, but worse” makes perfect sense if your end goal is to grift people.

Everyone knows what a train is, and any investment firm will be able to understand the material, land, and labor costs because all of that is well known and documented.

When you have an idea that no one has ever done before, then the costs get nebulous. Getting funding turns into a marketing problem, and thats a lot easier when the person paying doesn’t know exactly what they’re getting. Every investor wants to be on the ground floor of the next major innovation, and your job is to convince them that’s what this is.