Nate says you almost need to treat fundraising like a sales pipeline, especially at pre-seed when you don't have much revenue or product. It mirrors finding your ICP: it takes a while to find your first set of customers and your ideal customer profile, then you go aggressive on targeting them — and he took the same approach for investors.
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Nate frames the raise like building a sales motion. At pre-seed "it's really just you selling the business and the mission and where it could go," so "you almost need to treat it like a sales pipeline." Finding a yes investor mirrors finding customers: "it's kind of like kind of like finding your ICP for, for business, finding your first set of customers, like, takes a while and that takes a while to find that ideal customer profile. And then once you do, you kind of just go aggressive on targeting that customer. I think we took the same approach for fundraising." He warns that as a first-time founder it's really just figuring it out as you go, and that he'd be a lot more strategic next time.