Pre-seed startups: the 5 things to do first to get customers
A pre-seed startup wins its first customers with 5 moves, run in order. Each one has a threshold you can fail and a real company that passed it.
Every stage breaks the thing that got you there. The founder who closed the first 10 customers by hand has to turn that into a channel at seed, and the seed channel stops scaling somewhere around Series A. So I wrote one playbook per stage: 5 moves in order, each with a number you can fail.
A pre-seed startup wins its first customers with 5 moves, run in order. Each one has a threshold you can fail and a real company that passed it.
A seed-stage startup has about 2 years to reach Series A. Here are the 5 moves to make in order, each with a threshold you can fail and a company that did it.
A Series A startup has about 2.5 years to earn its Series B. Here are the 5 moves, in order, each with a VC benchmark you can fail and a company that hit it.
A Series B startup has to keep growing without buying every dollar of it. The 5 moves, in order, each with a threshold you can fail and a real company example.
Your first channel is full and the board reads burn multiples. Here are the 5 Series C startup growth priorities in order, each with a threshold you can fail.
I've grouped everything else I've written by the question it answers.
Narrower pages for each stage, from the first 10 customers to what investors check before the next round.
The creators, shows and speakers worth your time, and what each one actually teaches.
The podcasts, books and investors worth your time, and what they actually say about growth.
What findability means once buyers ask an AI instead of scrolling a page of results.
Distribution decides which product gets heard, and most teams already own reach they never use.
The economics that made rented attention the default, and what broke underneath them.
Why copied frameworks arrive late, and why generic output never gets cited.
The words these posts lean on are defined in the glossary: distribution debt, the citation gap, ghost citation and answer laundering.
On Sell That S*it!, VC partners take apart how one of their companies got from one stage to the next.