Founder Topic

How do early-stage founders raise a pre-seed round?

Across the archive, the founders who raised quickly had three things: deep customer understanding from real conversations, a specific market insight that wasn't obvious to outsiders, and a clear point of view on why now. Founders who took longer either lacked one of those or were raising in a market that didn't fit venture economics.

Pre-seed investors are betting on the founder and the thesis, not the product. The Founders In Motion archive includes founders who closed in days and founders who took years — and the pattern that separates them isn't talent or category. It's how much customer work was done before the first investor meeting.

Quick answers

How long does a pre-seed round take to close?

Wildly variable. Celeste Amadon closed pre-seed in 8 days and seed in 4 days — but she came from the VC side and had built her network there first. Nate Spiteri contacted nearly 1,000 investors before his Shopfront pre-seed closed. Without pre-built credibility, expect 3-6 months minimum.

Can you raise pre-seed with no product?

Yes. Shakeel Lala raised backing from one of Australia's largest VCs with no business idea at all — on the promise he'd spend a year finding something worth building. Celeste Amadon raised her pre-seed before Known had meaningful traction. The bar isn't product, it's evidence the founder has done deep work and the thesis is defensible.

What pre-seed valuation should I expect in 2026?

Wildly geographic. US pre-seed for software ranges roughly $5M-$15M post-money. APAC and Australia trend lower — $3M-$8M is common. Specific traction (paying customers, signed LOIs, technical moat) pushes higher. Don't fixate on valuation — fixate on dilution and the quality of investors on the cap table.

Should I use a SAFE or a priced round?

SAFEs for speed and simplicity, priced rounds when the round is larger and the cap table needs structure. The FiM archive includes founders who raised on both. Watch for SAFE stacking — multiple SAFEs without tracking dilution can leave you shocked at your cap table later.

What founders in the archive say

EP 27

Shakeel Lala · Marloo

$40M FinTech Founder on Raising Millions Before He Had a Business Idea

Shakeel quit his job, convinced one of Australia's largest VCs to back him with no business idea, ran 800 conversations with financial advisors over 9 months, then vibe-coded a demo the week before Australia's biggest financial advice conference. People tried to buy it on the spot. Marloo has since raised $10M and is live across 6 countries.

650+Financial advice firms now using Marloo across six countries, including the US, Canada, UK and Australia.

"You can vibe code your ideas. You can vibe code products. But you can't vibe code customers. And you can't vibe code sales. Distribution matters more than anything."— Shakeel Lala, on the limits of AI in early-stage building (15:30)

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EP 25

Celeste Amadon · Known

This Stanford Dropout Wants to Help You Fall in Love

Celeste was 21 when she walked into Forerunner Ventures. She raised her pre-seed in 8 days, her seed in 4 days, and fielded 12+ term sheets. Known has set up 1,500 curated dates in beta and hundreds of couples are now in relationships. Her thesis: today's apps are perversely incentivised to keep you single and paying.

8 / 4 daysPre-seed closed in 8 days. Seed closed in 4. More than a dozen term sheets across the two rounds.

"Today's dating apps have been designed and tweaked and redesigned and redeployed to keep you single. They're perversely incentivised to try and keep people on the apps for longer — keep people hopeful enough but also unsatisfied, so that they're more likely to upgrade to being paying users."— Celeste Amadon, on the structural problem with the category (00:00)

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EP 24

Nam Nguyen · TruthSystems (YC S25)

How He Turned 3 YC Rejections into a $25M AI Governance Company

Nam's co-founder was 19 years old. Law firms told them "come back in 5 years." They applied to YC four times. When they finally got in, their $4M round filled in 48 hours. TruthSystems is now the AI governance layer sitting inside law firms in real time.

$4MSeed round filled in approximately 48 hours after YC acceptance — Sunday night to Tuesday night.

"We had firms tell us, "come back in five years. Come back when you are Microsoft-sized." When you're that young you actually don't get a lot of benefit from the imagination. We realised we had to remove imagination from the equation — less vision, but actually more of the product."— Nam Nguyen, on selling AI governance as a 21-year-old (05:23)

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EP 23

Finnlay Morcombe · Fluency

The 25-Year-Old Who Raised $6M From Early Facebook Investors

At 25, Finnlay Morcombe built Fluency — a platform that maps how work actually happens in Fortune 500 organizations — raised 6 million from Accel within weeks of landing in the US, and hard pivoted into the product within one week of going to market.

6 millionSeed round Finnlay raised from Accel, before he'd been in the US more than a few weeks

"we went to market with it and within one week we're like okay we're hard pivoting because the reception was completely different"—

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EP 3

Nate Spiteri · Shopfront

I Spoke to 1,000 Investors Before Raising. Here's What Nobody Tells You

Nate Spiteri raised 800 K for Shopfront in December — the month every investor told him a round could never close. To get there, he reached out to almost 1000 investors and treated fundraising like a sales pipeline.

800 KRaised for Shopfront, closed in December in a tough funding environment

"It's very hard to, like turn a side hustle into something that's venture scalable. because there's a lot of work that needs to be done before you even think about generating any revenue."— Nate Spiteri, on why building part-time doesn't work (06:41)

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