IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-981-95-5597-0_11.html

Zero to Pre-Seed—Foundation Building

In: Startup Fundraising Decoded

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy Hor

    (RMIT University, School of Management)

  • Dimo Dimov

    (University of Bath, School of Management)

  • Georges Romme

    (Eindhoven University of Technology, Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences)

  • James Skinner

    (University of Newcastle Australia, Newcastle Business School)

Abstract

This chapter’s core message is simple: don’t rush to raise—earn the right to raise. Before chasing capital, focus on validating the problem, customer, solution, and business model through low-cost experiments (often dozens of customer conversations and scrappy, manual minimum viable products [MVPs]), because early credibility comes more from evidence of learning than from polished decks. Be deliberate about whether you even need external funding yet—bootstrapping, grants, accelerators, or angels may be better fits depending on your capital intensity, timing, and ambitions—and use this phase to build signals investors care about: early users, clear traction indicators, credible advisors, and a compelling, evidence-backed narrative. Fundraising should be a strategic enabler, not a default milestone; the goal is to build something genuinely valuable, with capital following progress rather than substituting for it.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy Hor & Dimo Dimov & Georges Romme & James Skinner, 2026. "Zero to Pre-Seed—Foundation Building," Springer Books, in: Startup Fundraising Decoded, chapter 0, pages 297-312, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-95-5597-0_11
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-5597-0_11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-95-5597-0_11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.