I want to clear up a big misconception about what it means to be a "pre-seed" investor, and what it means when a firm says they invest "day zero." Clearing it up will save a lot of founders from heartache.

True day-zero check-writers are exceptionally rare. Even firms that explicitly call themselves day zero on their own sites tend to have quite a few qualifying filters that come along with day-zero conviction. For a first-time founder who doesn’t carry tier 1 credentials, day zero genuinely may not exist.

So what are these firms underwriting when there’s no product, no revenue, and no customers? Prior evidence. When an investor can’t underwrite the business, they underwrite the founder. "Day zero" almost always means the firm backs founders who carry one or more of the credentials below.

The 10 credentials

Track record

  • A previously exited founder (bootstrapped or VC-backed) with a positive outcome.
  • A previously venture-backed founder who didn’t get the big exit but showed true promise.
  • A former co-founder (not the CEO) of a successfully exited startup, venture-backed or bootstrapped.
  • A former co-founder (non-CEO) of a venture-backed startup that didn’t have a big exit but showed promise.

Distribution and pedigree

  • A celebrity, influencer, or other public figure who carries a substantial distribution advantage.
  • A former professional or Olympic athlete who has proven themselves elite in another arena. These skills and that mindset tend to transfer, and investors know it.
  • A former early, or highly influential, employee of a startup darling.
  • A former employee of an elite, highly competitive organization. This one is rarer as a strong enough signal on its own.
  • A student, dropout, or recent grad of Stanford, Harvard, MIT, or a few other select institutions.

Proximity

  • A former VC, or VC-turned-founder, with pre-existing investor relationships. (Is that really day zero?)

There’s one special exception: a founder with a long-standing personal relationship with the investor, built over years, that let the investor develop high conviction in their abilities. Again, is that day zero? By the time the check is written, the conviction is years old.

How to use this knowledge

Read the list again and be honest with yourself.

If you carry one or more of these credentials, day-zero and pre-seed firms are a real path for you. Qualify them properly before you reach out, starting with whether their fund size fits your round, and build a real target list instead of pitching whoever happens to come along.

If you carry none of them, you’re in the vast majority. Understanding that you are unlikely to raise a pre-seed round without substantial traction, real evidence of your ability to make your startup take off, is the first step. And it’s harder than ever to convince an investor to underwrite a venture with little or no de-risking, particularly in today’s market, where AI-enabled everything lets founders build, ship, and go to market faster and more efficiently than ever before.

No credential? Build leverage instead

The vast majority of founders should focus on talking to customers, building product, and figuring out distribution, not spending six months trying to raise a round that is highly unlikely to close.

So build a good business. Get traction with paying customers. Capitalize lightly along the way with angel investors, grants, and accelerators or other relevant sources of capital. Do that until you have the leverage and momentum that institutional funding requires.

Traction does for you what the credentials do for other founders: it gives an investor something concrete to underwrite. The difference is you earned yours in the open, and revenue is the most undeniable proof of potential.

You should still build investor relationships early (start now)

While you build, proactively and intentionally build relationships with the best-fit prospective investors for your pre-seed and seed rounds (and your A).

Attend the conferences where investors actually show up. Connect and follow on social, and add meaningful contributions to the discussions they’re already having. Most importantly, start sending monthly updates to prospective investors, even pre-revenue. Twelve months of updates showing steady progress builds the same thing the credentials buy: conviction, before you ever ask for the meeting.

Waiting to build these relationships until you need capital is the most common fundraising mistake we see, and it’s completely avoidable.

The reframe

The credentials on this list are borrowed conviction. Traction is conviction you earned. One of those is available to every founder reading this.