Raising at the Start: Should You?

The answer is it depends. And it’s deeply personal.

The more money you raise, the more responsibility and stress you put on yourself to get everything right. At the very beginning, you know very little with certainty. Which means your best move is usually to raise as little as possible until you’ve validated your insight, found a desperate user, and built alignment with your co-founders.

This is counterintuitive. 

Most people aim to minimize risk and load up on capital early, sometimes before leaving their full-time jobs. But entrepreneurship is about running toward risk. That’s where the biggest outcomes come from.

So here’s the framework:

• Raise only what you need to cover the basics (living expenses, research, travel, early exploration).
• Bootstrap if you can. The further you get before raising, the better your valuation will be.
• Align this decision with your personal circumstances — what you can and can’t live with financially.

Why Raise a Pre-seed?

There are valid reasons to raise a pre-seed round:

• Guidance. A strong investor can provide expertise and reduce risk as you navigate the unknown.
  
• Runway. Most pre-seed rounds fund 12 months of exploration and customer discovery with a small team (1–3 hires).
  

Milestones. You can use that time and money to validate your insight, build an early product, and test with real users.

Some founders skip pre-seed and go straight to seed when conviction is clear and the insight strong. That can work, but it’s rare.Start with this question: What do I need to accomplish in the next 12 months to make meaningful progress? Fund that — no more, no less.

What Investors Look For at Pre-seed

• Team. This is the single most important factor. Great investors know everything else will change. They want to back your skills, resilience, and unique edge. What are your superpowers? What are your Co-founder’s?
  
• Market. Venture outcomes are binary — either portfolio companies are iconic or irrelevant. The market has to be big enough to justify a VC taking the risk.
  
• Validation. Any evidence that you deeply understand the problem and have spoken to potential customers helps. The more validation, the less risky you look.

Choosing the Right Investor

At this stage, who you take money from matters as much as the money itself. You want someone who believes in you, not just your insight. Someone who’s willing to give you hard truths, stand beside you when things get rough, and help you grow as a founder.

There’s plenty of capital out there. Don’t settle for investors who only show up once a quarter and ask about revenue. Find partners who are as committed to your success as you are.

Closing Thoughts: From Formation to PMF

So far, we’ve covered the first phase of starting a company: clarifying your motivations, distinguishing insight from idea, choosing co-founders, handling legal basics, and deciding whether (and how) to raise money.

These are the table stakes. They get you into the game. But they don’t win it.

The real test of whether you’ve got a solid company — not just a project — comes next: finding product-market fit. We said it already, but it bears repeating: finding PMF is the most important part of your journey and the most important part of this Field Guide. Everything you’ve done so far is preparation for that pursuit.

If you’re ready, let’s dive into how you actually find PMF and what separates the founders who beat the odds from the ones who don’t.