Jack Greco advises a founder closing a $250K pre-seed round to turn the final $15K-$20K into a milestone-conditional commitment from existing investors instead of grinding through more pitches. With $500K MRR already in the bank, he suggests earning the shortfall elsewhere and injecting it yourself, or setting a contingency plan if the money doesn't come.
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Noah, you raised your hand earlier. Do you want to come on really quick? Hey, Jack, this is kind of a personal question, but also, you know, for other founders here as well. I'm currently in the last, last phases of raising my pre-seed. I have like at the moment $15K to $20K remaining of my $250K round, but that $15K seems to be like the hardest thing to raise. What do you like recommend for founders that are trying to get that, you know, Last bit of money raised?
Well, I mean, one, have a plan for not having it. That's your first plan, right? Look, I mean, I tell people you spend the first dollar before you spend the last dollar, right? So maybe what you do is you go to your current investors and say, this is what I plan to get done with the $250K. Pre-seed's tough because, are you pre-revenue right now? No, I have a bit of revenue. It's growing. It's like at $500,000 MRR. You know, go to somebody and have them, have them make it a challenge. Hey, look, if I hit this, I don't need that last $25K or $30K for 6 months. I'm making something up. If in month 4 I'm here, would you give it to me? And they could say yes or no. Somebody's going to say yes right now. I'm a sucker. I'm a salesperson at heart and I love being sold. So like if somebody said that to me, I'll be like, yeah, I'll take that. Same valuation? Sure, I'll take it. Right? Like, you just need to find somebody that wants to deal with you because then you're done. What you're not trying to optimize for getting $20K, you're trying to optimize for you not wasting 40 hours to get $20K. You might as well go get a consulting gig somewhere and make $20K and put it into the company yourself. You know, but I mean, you just gotta be, I care about clever more than smart to some degree. And I think early on founders need to be clever. They need to say, what am I really optimizing for? I'm optimizing my biggest resource. My only resource outside of my health is my time. So as long as I'm not doing anything that's going to kill me, I need to be able to get as much of my time. Those are your at-bats at being successful with the business. So you just be clever and like literally write that down. Your goal shouldn't say raise $20,000. It says spend zero time fundraising, right? Like that's the way I would think of something like that.
