The first check should be the easiest money you raise
Why we wire quickly, keep terms plain, and refuse to over-engineer a pre-seed round.
The first round is the one founders are worst equipped to run and the one where bad decisions compound longest. You have no leverage, no comparables, and no way to tell a good investor from a fast talker. Most advice available to you was written by people optimizing the other side of the table.
So here is our position, plainly. The first check should be the easiest money you ever raise. If it is not, something in the process is broken, and it is usually the investor.
Speed is the whole product
A pre-seed raise that drags on for four months costs a founder something no amount of capital replaces. Attention. Every week spent in diligence is a week not spent with users. We hold ourselves to two weeks from first meeting to a decision because that is the shortest window in which we can be responsible, and anything longer is us being comfortable at your expense.
The objection we hear is that speed means less rigor. It does not. It means the rigor happens before the meeting rather than after it. By the time we sit down we have read what you shipped, used the product, and talked to one person who worked with you. The meeting is for the questions we could not answer alone.
A clear no in a week is worth more to a founder than a warm maybe for a quarter.
Plain terms, or none
We use a standard post-money safe or a priced seed on documents you can read in about ten minutes. No participating preferred. No full ratchet. No side letter granting us information rights that only exist to make our reporting easier.
The reason is self-interested as much as principled. Unusual terms at pre-seed create problems at Series A, and the person cleaning those up is a founder who should be selling instead. Every hour you spend explaining a strange cap table to a new lead is an hour we effectively paid for.
Do not over-engineer the round
Founders routinely spend six weeks optimizing a valuation that will be irrelevant in eighteen months. The difference between a $8m and a $10m cap on a $1.5m raise is roughly three percent of your company. The difference between shipping in January and shipping in March can be the company.
Raise a round that gets you to a real milestone with a year of margin. Take the money from people who will pick up the phone. Then go back to work.
What this means for you
If you are talking to us, hold us to this. Ask when you will hear back and write the answer down. If we drift, say so. The way an investor behaves during the raise is the most reliable preview you will get of how they behave when something goes wrong, and something always goes wrong.
And if you are talking to someone else who is taking their time, that is information too. Slowness at this stage is rarely thoughtfulness. Usually it is optionality, and it is being purchased with your calendar.
