Where should a startup begin? From pre-seed to finding first investors — your real-world advice?
Hey PH community 👋
I’m building a startup and reaching the point where I need to better understand the early-stage funding landscape — especially around pre-seed and first checks.
There’s a lot of theory online, but I’d love to hear your real stories and practical tips:
• How did you raise your first funding?
• What helped you get those initial intros to angels or micro-VCs?
• Is it worth bootstrapping until MVP? Or better to start building relationships with investors earlier?
• What were your biggest mistakes (or wins) at the early funding stage?
My product is in the creative tools space (AI for designers), and I’m figuring out what a smart early-stage path looks like — including whether I need funding right now or just strong advisors.
Any advice, playbooks, or lessons would be incredibly appreciated 🙏
Let’s make this thread a helpful place for other early founders too.
p.s. Looking for the mentor and co-founder
Replies
Maybe @sentry_co could have his say?
@busmark_w_nika Every epoch has its own conditions. What worked in 2020 doesnt work anymore. So most advice on the internet is obsolete as they are usually based on previous epochs. I would maybe try to envision future epochs. Like what comes after AI wrappers, what is fringe now, but will become mainstream later. What comes to mind is robotics, hardware, and maybe more interconnected AI like MCP. Most investors are looking for things that can create their own moats over time. So the story to pitch is often. This is our startup now. But when it grows it will create this natural moat, that cant easily be replicated. Attaching what this moats can look like here: https://eoncodes.substack.com/p/rip-moats
@busmark_w_nika @sentry_co Thanks a lot, have insights after this messages!
@sentry_co @maisjandesign I think that André has a lot of experience.
This is a good question. Early stage can be messy, and there's no single roadmap. But here's what I’d say, from both experience and hard-won observations:
Start by getting brutally clear on your “why now” for the product and the funding. Most founders start fundraising too early or without a sharp enough story. Investors aren’t just betting on your idea, they’re betting on your momentum. If you don’t have traction, show real insight. If you don’t have revenue, show demand or behavior. Anything that says: “This isn’t just an idea. People care.” If you can, bootstrap to MVP. This can help demonstrate your resourcefulness, can ability to build and understand the user deeply, and that credibility helps when you do talk to angels or micro-VCs.
Your first intros usually come through people who’ve seen you execute, be they past colleagues, builder communities, or even cold DMs with context. I got my first investor from a Slack thread after sharing early results, and that turned into a referral chain. I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is chasing capital before you’ve validated anything, and one of the biggest wins is building something real (even if it's small) and fueling your momentum. Funding gets easier when your product is solving a real, felt problem. Until then, everything else is pretty much background noise.
@a11yexpert thanks, can you share more about mention project?
InspireMe
Mais, I'm not a multi-exited founder, but I can share some thoughts on your questions since I'm currently running a venture-backed business. (We closed our seed round in May 2024, by the way.)
My honest take:
Before you start thinking about early-stage funding, it's more important than ever to ask yourself why you need funding in the first place—especially if you're building an AI product.
As you've seen how the AI sector has evolved in recent years, you'd probably agree that its progress exceeds expectations every time, in every way possible. And truth be told, investors feel the same way.
So expect no surprises or awes coming from them just because you're on to something and it's AI.
Ask yourself some hard questions:
1. If everything falls apart, would you still remain in the design space? (e.g. Your co-founders leave you high and dry, nobody's interested in funding your business...etc)
- This is what people call founder-market fit. In my case, it was content creation and marketing. I was willing to become a solopreneur or ghostwriter if it meant I could keep creating value in the content space, even if everything went south. Alex Hormozi puts it this way: You need to either love it or at least be great at it to go through the phase of perceived pessimism(The valley of death) to get to the phase of perceived optimism(PMF). If you feel like you need the funding to stay in the game, trust me, it means you're not there yet.
2. What's your definition of MVP?
- The term MVP(minimum viable product) didn't change but what minimum means has. Today, minimum means you've validated willingness to pay (WTP) for your product. Traffic doesn't mean anything if it doesn't equate to cash. Savvy investors dig even deeper into your unit economics because they learned the hard way watching their portfolio companies collapse after the "growth at all costs" era ended..
But here's the best part about this shift: yyou no longer need to build software or create fake door landing pages to prove your point. My MVP was the content I produced daily, and what I pitched to investors was a small group of people willing to pay to learn my process—plus my plan to scale that concept.
3. Once you get to this point, do you still need funding?
After you validate your MVP, you won't have to reach out to investors because:
a) They'll reach out to you
b) People will want to give you warm introductions to investors in their network
When you reach this point, you won't need playbooks. You'll know exactly who you should meet and how to reach them.
Hope this helps.