The Essential Pre-Seed Fundraising Resources
Conclusion of the “How to Raise a Pre-Seed Round” Series
This is the last part of the “How to Raise a Pre-Seed Round” Series: The Essential Pre-Seed Fundraising Resources.
How to Raise a Pre-Seed Round Series
📚 Resources: Essential Resources (this post)
In addition to the strategy and approach for positioning your company to raise a pre-seed round successfully, here are some helpful tactical tools and resources to make it happen.
Resources for Fundraising Tactics
Paul Graham’s essays on fundraising. There are a lot of good ones, but How to Convince Investors is especially good.
The Pitch podcast to listen to other founders pitch.
Look at decks of companies currently raising on Republic, WeFunder or Seed Invest (scroll to the data room at the bottom of the deal). Keep in mind some of these companies aren’t venture scalable businesses, but they are currently raising money at your stage and have had some vetting.
There are a lot of books on fundraising, but Secrets of Sand Hill Road is solid and up to date.
Raising a priced round is unlikely for pre-seed companies, but if you do, Venture Deals is helpful in understanding the terminology.
YC Videos
Y Combinator has some of the best resources when it comes to fundraising. Here are some of the most helpful videos I’ve found.
How to Talk to Investors by Michael Seibel (starts halfway through)
How to Get Meetings by Aaron Harris
Fundraising Fundamentals by Geoff Ralston
Fundraising Legal Mechanics by Kirthy Natho
Fundraising Tools
PDFCompressor to compress your pitch deck for emails. DocSend can also work, but in general, I wouldn’t recommend it. This article does a good job of explaining why most investors don’t prefer DocSend.
SAFE docs for investor agreements. Be prepared to understand the fundamentals of a SAFE and be able to talk through different scenarios if you’re raising from non-professional investors.
Docusign to send SAFEs.
The specific tools are always evolving, I’ve heard Clerky and Carta are starting to streamline the SAFE signing process, but I have not personally used them.
