First institutional round · $500K–$1.5M · 8–10 weeks
Running a pre-seed
A pre-seed is won on sequencing more than on story. Most first-time founders start sending before their list is right and before their room is built, then spend the next six weeks recovering. This walkthrough runs the same raise in the order that compounds – narrow the list, build once, send in batches, and let the system keep the state.
8–15%
Cold outreach reply rate
Published range for well-researched, personalised founder outbound at pre-seed. Below 5% usually indicates a list or personalisation problem, not a market one.
40–60%
Warm intro to meeting
A live warm path converts to a first meeting at several times the cold rate – which is why warm paths get exhausted first.
30–60
Meetings per term sheet
Typical first-round funnel. Fewer than 30 first meetings is usually too small a top of funnel to produce competitive terms.
8–12 weeks
Time to close
From first send to signed docs at pre-seed. Rounds running past 16 weeks tend to signal a list or narrative issue worth diagnosing rather than pushing through.
The walkthrough
Week 1
Profile and match
Complete the founder and company profile – stage, sector, geography, traction, founder-market fit. Matching scores all 1.25L investors, VCs, incubators and accelerators against it and returns a ranked list. Filter hard: pre-seed cheque band, active in the last two quarters, willing to lead. A 60–80 name list beats a 300 name list you cannot service.
AI matching · Investor table
Week 1–2
Build the room before you need it
Open the smart data room and let it tell you what a pre-seed room is missing. Typically: incorporation documents, current captable, a twelve-month model, a metrics view, founder agreements, IP assignments. Doing this in week one is the difference between diligence being a formality and diligence being the reason a live conversation goes cold for eleven days while you find an IP assignment.
Smart data room · Gap detection
Week 2
Warm paths first
Run the warm-path agent across your team's networks against the ranked list. Anything with a live path moves to a separate pipeline – those go out as intro requests, not cold notes. Warm converts at a multiple of cold, so exhaust this before spending a single cold send.
Agents · CRM pipeline
Week 3–6
Batched outreach, twenty at a time
The outreach agent drafts per investor from their thesis, portfolio and recent activity. You review, edit and approve – nothing sends unapproved. Send in batches of twenty, spaced roughly a week apart, so that what you learn from the first replies changes the next twenty drafts instead of all ninety notes going out carrying the same weak framing.
Outreach · Approval queue
Week 4–8
Run the pipeline, not the inbox
Leads auto-capture from email and LinkedIn, every touch logs itself, and each investor carries an AI-suggested next step. Your weekly job becomes clearing the suggested-next-step queue rather than reconstructing the state of ninety conversations from your sent folder.
Tracking CRM · Activity log
Week 6–10
Close and keep the record
Model the round on the captable before you sign, keep it current through each SAFE, and move committed investors into investor relations so the first update goes out on a cadence rather than four months late.
Captable & IR
Closing note
The pre-seed pattern that works is unglamorous: a shorter list, built once and verified before each batch; a room that is finished before the first meeting; and one system holding the state so the raise does not consume the quarter it was supposed to fund.
Benchmarks are drawn from public industry reporting. RaiseOS is in private beta and pre-revenue – nothing here is a customer outcome.
Other playbooks
Start free. Upgrade when the round goes live.
Matching, the MCP server and the data room stay free. Pro adds the CRM, agents and outreach for $500 a year.
No card required · 1.25L investor records from day one · Nothing sends without your approval