How to Raise Pre-Seed (and Seed) Financing for Your Startup

Fundraising is an all-encompassing grind through crazy town. But there are some things that will help. (#68)

For most founders, raising pre-seed or seed stage capital is a painful experience. It takes a long time, you get overwhelmed with disparate feedback, and you’re bombarded with stories of other companies raising millions with less traction. The whole experience is like being in a tornado naked, flailing around with nothing to hold onto.

I’ve been involved in a few easy fundraises, where startups closed quickly at a valuation that made them very happy, with eager investors piling in. To be clear, this does not guarantee success. Some of these companies went on to win, some lost. Fundraising isn’t a guarantee of success, it’s a tool that buys you time to figure things out.

Today, through Highline Beta (the venture studio & VC fund that I co-founded in 2016), we invest at inception (when a company is first incorporated) and follow-on at pre-seed/seed. The terminology “pre-seed” and “seed” is confusing, because neither has a universally agreed upon definition. Some startups skip pre-seed alt…