How to find a lead investor for your seed round

On 6 October 2026 Simpl, a Milan startup that uses AI to line up sales meetings for B2B teams, announced a €1.2 million pre-seed. One name came first in the news. Techshop Capital led the round; Vento and a group of business angels followed.

Every round needs that first name. Without it you can collect a dozen investors who like the deck and still not close, because each one is waiting for somebody else to set the price. Here’s what a lead investor does, who leads seed rounds in Italy right now, how to vet a fund before the first call and how to bring in followers without overselling. First raise? Then read the beginner’s map from zero to a first round before you go on.

What is a lead investor, and what does a lead do?

A lead investor is the one who goes first. They agree the valuation and the terms with you, write them into a term sheet, the short and mostly non-binding summary of the offer, and usually put in the largest amount. The other investors, the followers, come in on the same terms. In an Italian srl, the usual limited company for startups, those terms end up in two documents: the capital increase your shareholders approve and the shareholders’ agreement the new investors sign.

Then comes the checking. Followers lean on the lead’s due diligence, the checks on your numbers, contracts and team, and it’s real work. In a survey of almost 900 venture capitalists by Paul Gompers and three co-authors, the average firm spent 118 hours on it and called ten references before a deal closed. The lead also tends to join the board. Carta describes a common early-stage setup: one seat for the lead investor, two for the founders and one independent member both sides agree on.

Why does a round stall without a lead investor?

Because investors watch each other. Paul Graham, who started Y Combinator with three others in 2005, described the pattern in 2013: they ‘all wait as long as they can, then when some act the rest have to’. And when you first start fundraising, he added, ‘the expected value of an investor who won’t “lead” is zero’.

Fund managers say it too. ‘It’s easy to find a dozen firms that want to fill out a round, but most will want someone else to lead first,’ Micah Rosenbloom of Founder Collective wrote in 2020.

Italy adds a coordination problem. In IBAN’s survey of Italian business angels, 81% of the deals it tracked in 2025 were syndicated, with six angels per deal on average. Six people won’t settle on a valuation by themselves. Someone has to put a number on the table so the others can react to it.

The good news? The hardest yes is the first. ‘Getting the first substantial offer can be half the total difficulty of fundraising,’ Graham wrote.

Who leads seed rounds in Italy?

A seed round is the first sizeable money from professional investors, raised to prove the business can grow; the pre-seed is the smaller round before it. To see who leads seed rounds here, look at who has actually done it lately, not at who writes ‘early stage’ on a homepage. This is what we found in recent deal news and on the investors’ own sites.

• CDP Venture Capital. The state-backed manager led Talentware’s €3.3 million seed in July 2026, and 360 Capital, which had led the pre-seed, doubled its investment. Our guide explains how CDP Venture Capital funds startups.
• Italian seed funds. Italian Founders Fund, which closed its fund above €100 million in July 2026, says ‘We lead or co-lead early rounds’, with first tickets of €250,000 to €3 million. Techshop Capital led Simpl. 360 Capital invests from pre-seed to Series B.
• Angel groups. Club degli Investitori, more than 450 angels, says it can act as lead investor or co-invest. Italian Angels for Growth takes a term sheet to its members’ meeting, for deals of €200,000 to €1.5 million. More in our guide to business angels in Italy and how to approach them.
• Foreign funds. Compri, founded in Milan in 2024, raised €3.2 million in June 2026 in a seed led by Picus Capital of Munich. Italian Founders Fund, which had co-led its pre-seed with Dutch Founders Fund, followed.

Compri’s sequence is worth studying. An Italian fund co-leads the pre-seed, a bigger foreign fund leads the seed, and the first fund follows. For the wider picture, read venture capital in Italy and who invests in 2026.

How to vet a potential lead before you pitch

Ten minutes per name can save you weeks of meetings. Check six things.

What to check	Why it matters	Where to look
Do they lead?	Many funds only follow	Press releases saying ‘led by’ or ‘co-led’; then ask in the first call
Fund size	Size divided by planned deals is roughly their budget for you, now and later	Closing announcements
Fund age	An old fund may have stopped new deals or hold little for follow-ons	Launch year on the site; ask how far into the fund your deal falls
First ticket	Your round should fit their usual first cheque	Fund pages: €250,000 to €3 million at Italian Founders Fund
Recent leads	Proof they do it at your stage, in your sector	Deal news from the last 12 months
Decision process	Who votes, and how long it takes	Ask. At Italian Angels for Growth: one to two months to the members’ meeting, then three to four for due diligence and investment

Do the sums on fund size. Say a €50 million fund plans to back 25 companies. That’s about €2 million per company over the fund’s life, first ticket and follow-ons together, before fees. It can lead a €1 million seed. A €5 million round is beyond it on its own.

Then ask about reserves, the money a fund keeps back for later rounds. Rosenbloom says they’re ‘usually described as a ratio, eg. 4:1’, and warns founders not to count on them, least of all after a rocky start. Age counts as well. Ask how far into the fund your deal comes: ‘It’s helpful to know if your potential VC will be around in a few years’ time.’ Some funds have stopped altogether. CDP’s Italia Venture I, for one, says it no longer makes new investments in startups.

Lead first, then followers: using soft commitments honestly

Order matters. Spend the first weeks on investors who lead, and keep followers warm with a short monthly note. Bring them back in once a lead is close.

A soft commitment is a conditional yes: an angel or a fund says they’ll put in, say, €50,000 once someone sets terms they accept. A lead wants to see that the round can fill, so these help. Inflated ones can sink you the day the lead picks up the phone to check. Graham’s rule is the safe one: ‘Treat investors as saying no till they unequivocally say yes’.

Italian Angels for Growth runs the whole thing formally. At its members’ meeting, interested angels state quantified soft commitments, at least €10,000 each. Due diligence starts only if the total passes €200,000, and the commitments turn hard during it.

Three habits keep you honest. Get each soft commitment by email, with the amount and the conditions. Tell a prospective lead exactly what’s soft and what’s signed. Never use an investor’s name in a meeting without asking them first.

Then the term sheet. Sign it and the no-shop clause kicks in: for a set period, Carta notes, you can’t go soliciting competing offers. Does that window still let you add followers on the lead’s terms? Ask, and get the answer in writing. The rest of the document is covered in the term sheet clauses that matter at seed.

How to find a VC to lead your round, week by week

Treat the hunt as its own list inside your investor pipeline: likely leads on top, followers underneath, a dated next step on every row. Our method for building an investor target list gives you the names to start from.

The best way in is a founder they’ve backed. Ask for one introduction per fund, to the partner who covers your sector. Put the round in the first email in a single line: the amount, what it pays for and what’s already committed, soft and hard labelled as such. Then ask the question that saves the most time. Do you lead rounds of this size?

Corporates lead rounds too. Eni Next, Eni’s venture arm, led a €550,000 round in EXE Engineering in February 2026 together with Zero, an accelerator in CDP’s network. Their terms need a closer read, though; we cover them in corporate venture capital in Italy.

A spreadsheet is enough to run all this. If you’d rather not start from a blank one, we sell an investor CRM template for €49. One Excel file, in English and Italian. Each investor gets a fit score and a date for the next follow-up, and the dashboard and the weekly routine are already in there.

Checklist: before you ask anyone to lead your round

1. Write the round as one sentence a stranger would follow. Amount first, then the months of runway it buys, then the milestone it gets you to.
2. Two groups. Possible leads go above the line, followers below it.
3. For every lead, note fund size and age, first ticket, the last two rounds they led and who decides.
4. Who can introduce you to each lead? Ideally someone from their own portfolio.
5. Ask ‘Do you lead?’ on the first call. A ‘no’ on the third has cost you weeks.
6. Got a soft yes? Ask for a two-line email confirming how much, on what conditions and by when.
7. Don’t sign until you’ve read the no-shop clause and agreed with the lead, in writing, how followers come in.

This article is general information, not legal or investment advice. Have a lawyer read any term sheet, no-shop clause included, before you sign it.