FUNDRAISING GUIDE

Pre-seed fundraising guide

Turn your idea into a fundable thesis

Pre-seed funding is the earliest institutional capital a startup raises, typically before a product is fully built or validated in the market. At this stage, investors are betting primarily on the founding team and the size of the problem being solved. European pre-seed rounds are usually led by angel investors, micro-VCs, or accelerators who can move quickly with less formal due diligence.

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Typical Metrics

Round size€150k–€500k

Pre-money valuation€1M–€3M

Equity dilution10–20%

Monthly burn rate€10k–€30k

Runway post-raise12–18 months

Fundraising Tips

Lead with the problem and why you are uniquely positioned to solve it: at pre-seed, your story and conviction matter more than metrics.
Target investors who have backed companies at idea stage before; check their portfolio for pattern matching.
Keep your pitch deck to 10–12 slides and practice distilling your thesis to a 60-second verbal summary.
Use warm introductions wherever possible: a founder reference from another portfolio company converts far better than a cold email.
Close your round quickly by setting a clear deadline and being transparent about who else is already in.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

!Building too much before fundraising: pre-seed investors want to see a tight hypothesis, not months of unsolicited development.
!Valuing yourself based on potential rather than evidence, leading to a cap that scares away seed investors later.
!Pitching to large Series A or B funds who have no mandate to write pre-seed cheques.
!Neglecting to agree on pro-rata rights and information rights in the term sheet, which causes friction at seed.
!Raising too little to reach a meaningful seed milestone, leaving you underfunded at the worst moment.

Typical Timeline

4–8 weeks from first meeting to term sheet

Your Pitch Deck at Pre-seed

What Pre-Seed Is Actually For

At pre-seed you win with insight and evidence you can move fast. Show you understand a specific user pain and can test your way to product truth.

Useful signals now: 10-15 user interviews across 2-3 clear segments surfacing the same top-2 pains; a prototype or scripted demo; one or two acquisition experiments with basic conversion math.

You are not proving scale. You are proving there is something real to build and that you are the right team to build it.

Slides You Actually Need

At pre-seed, the goal is to show vision, thought process, and momentum. Here is what matters:

Executive Summary

Clear 2 to 3 sentence pitch.

Problem

A real, urgent, and focused pain.

Solution

How you are approaching it, what is different, and why now.

Product

Even a prototype or Notion demo works.

Market

Who is this for, why they care, and how big it can get.

Go to Market

What you have tried and what is next.

Team

Who is building this and relevant backgrounds.

Vision

Clear direction. Not a side project.

Ask

How much you are raising and how it moves the company forward.

What Good Looks Like

10-15 interviews with quotes and a simple cost-of-pain estimate.
Prototype demo with a short flow; 60% or more complete the key steps.
Waitlist or beta signups with source tags; basic funnel math (visit to signup to demo).
Two GTM tests with results (e.g., CTR, reply, demo rates) and next step.

What Investors Reject at Pre-Seed

!Generic problem statements
!Solutions in search of a problem
!Market slides with made-up TAMs
!Slides overloaded with filler
!No clear ask or plan for the next 12 months

Investors know the risk. Your job is to reduce doubt by showing real thinking, not deck theater.

What investors look for

A credible founding team with relevant domain expertise or unfair distribution advantage.
A clearly articulated problem with evidence that real people experience it and are willing to pay to solve it.
A large addressable market: European pre-seed investors typically want to see a credible path to €100M+ revenue.
Early signals of product thinking: wireframes, landing page signups, waitlist numbers, or letters of intent.
Founder resilience and coachability: pre-seed backers will work closely with you for years.

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