What we look for at pre-seed

At pre-seed there is rarely a product, a customer or a number to anchor on. What there is: a team, an insight about a market, and a reason the timing is right. We spend most of our diligence on those three things.

On teams we look for founders who have lived the problem, who learn quickly and who are honest about what they do not know yet. On markets we care less about the size of the slide and more about whether the first customers are reachable and desperate. On timing we ask what has changed, in technology, regulation or behaviour, that makes this possible now and not five years ago.

If those three line up, we are comfortable leading a round on a deck and a prototype. We would rather be early and wrong occasionally than late and right.