Pre-seed funding: what it is, who invests and how much

Pre-seed funding is the first money you take from anyone who isn’t a founder, usually before the product exists or right as its first version (the MVP) goes live. Picture €150,000 from five business angels: enough to pay a developer and run a pilot for a year.

We’ll look at who writes those first cheques, what they add up to and how an Italian SRL signs one. Starting from scratch? Our map from first idea to first round shows where pre-seed fits.

Who invests at pre-seed?

Mostly people who already know you. Often it’s just you: in ISTAT’s 2016 Startup Survey, 73.2% of Italian innovative startups had been founded on the founders’ own money alone. Only 8.2% had raised any equity at the start. Our guide to raising your first €50,000 covers that friends-and-family round.

Business angels come next, more and more often as a group. In June 2026 IBAN, the Italian business angel network, put out a report based on a survey of 386 people. In 2025, it found, 81% of angel deals were syndicated, six angels to the average deal. Tiny deals are getting rare. Only 12% were under €50,000, where in 2024 the share was 38%.

Then accelerators. CDP Venture Capital has a national network of accelerators that come in at this stage. One of them, VitalMatch, opened its first call on 10 March 2026 with Juventus among its partners, offering €150,000 to €400,000 each to five startups for a 13-week programme. Our list of startup accelerators in Italy and Europe has the others, with deadlines.

And a few funds now lead pre-seed rounds themselves. In September 2026 United Ventures and the Italian Founders Fund led €2 million in Iusful, a legal-services platform. In October it was Techshop Capital’s turn, with €1.2 million in Simpl, a Milan startup whose AI tells B2B sales teams whom to call.

How much pre-seed funding do startups raise?

Less than the headlines suggest. In the first half of 2026, Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance (working from PitchBook data) counted 46 Italian pre-seed rounds worth €37 million, roughly €800,000 a round by our arithmetic. Take that average with a pinch of salt: the report files any unlabelled first round under €200,000 as pre-seed.

PitchBook’s European figures lump the two early stages together: a median pre-seed or seed deal of €2.0 million in Q1 2026, at a €6.0 million pre-money valuation (the company’s value before the new money). Its next report, in August, found pre-seed valuations falling even as deals grew. In the US, startups on Carta signed more than 11,500 pre-seed instruments in Q2 2026, averaging $276,000 each. And 93% of pre-seed rounds there were SAFEs.

What does it cost you in equity? Say you raise €250,000 from six angels on an Italian SAFE with a €2.5 million post-money cap. If your seed round later prices the company above the cap, the angels convert at the cap. They own 10% (250,000 divided by 2.5 million) just before the seed money arrives.

Under $250,000, a post-money SAFE costs little, a median expected dilution of 3.2% in Carta’s 2024 data. Around $750,000, it’s nearer a ninth of the company (the $500,000 to $999,000 median was 11.2%), and $1 million to $2.4 million cost 17.2%. Our piece on how much equity to give away at pre-seed and seed has more.

Pre-seed in Italy: SAFE, convertible loan or capital increase?

In an Italian SRL you’ll usually pick one of three routes.

• Italian SAFE. The investor pays now and gets quotas at the next priced round. Version 2.0, presented in October 2024 by Italian Tech Alliance and Growth Capital with ten law firms, has you agree the discount, the cap, a maturity date and the valuation at maturity. There’s no right to repayment.
• Convertible loan. A loan that becomes quotas at the next round, when the company votes a capital increase and the debt is set off against the price. Italian Tech Alliance’s glossary says to weigh it carefully against the CICR rules on collecting savings.
• Direct capital increase. The angels buy new quotas at today’s price. Cleanest cap table, but the shareholders’ meeting must approve it and a notary writes the minutes (Article 2480 of the Civil Code): a lot of ceremony for €100,000.

Tax can tip the choice. In ruling 137 of 8 July 2026, the Agenzia delle Entrate said SAFE money paid into an innovative startup counts for the investor’s 65% income tax deduction from the year of payment, if it stays in for at least three years. That’s quite an argument to put to an angel (there’s a worked example in our guide to the Italian SAFE and the 2026 ruling).

Pre-seed vs seed: what’s the difference?

Ask what the money has to find out. Pre-seed cash answers two questions: is the problem real, and can you build the fix? Seed asks a harder one. Will people buy it, and keep buying?

	Pre-seed	Seed
What you’re proving	The problem is real and you can build the product	Customers pay and stay: the push to product-market fit
Who usually invests	Founders, friends and family, business angels, accelerators	Seed funds, angel syndicates, sometimes CDP Venture Capital
Italy, first half of 2026	46 rounds, €37M in total	39 rounds, €135M in total
US	Average pre-seed instrument $276,000 (Q2 2026)	Median post-money valuation $21.6M (Q1 2026)
Usual instrument in Italy	Italian SAFE, convertible loan, small capital increase	Priced capital increase or SAFE
What investors check	Team, evidence of the problem, prototype, first users or letters of intent	Revenue or usage, retention, month-on-month growth

What investors want to see at pre-seed

Not a five-year forecast. Nobody believes one at this stage, and they know you don’t either. What gets read is the team, the problem and any sign that customers feel it.

DocSend found VCs spend 4 minutes and 10 seconds on a pre-seed deck on average. Not long. The business model slide holds them longest, 83 seconds, and DocSend treats the financials as optional at this stage. Give your strongest slides to these:

• The team: why you, of all people, should solve this.
• Evidence of the problem. Twenty customer interviews with notes beat a market-size slide.
• First users, or at least letters of intent. A waiting list or a paid pilot counts, and so does a distributor’s letter naming a price.

Two mistakes are easy to make here. One is signing SAFE after SAFE without modelling what the conversions do to your cap table. The other is quieter: raising enough to build the product, then running out before there’s traction to show. You can see how an investor would score you today by answering the 12 questions in our investor readiness test, which emails you the score and an action plan.

Related terms

• The round after pre-seed, the seed round, is there to get the company to product-market fit.
• Pre-seed money often pays for the first usable version of a product, so it helps to know what counts as an MVP.
• If you’d rather not raise at all, there’s bootstrapping on revenue, with no outside equity.
• Our startup glossary explains SAFE, business angel, cap table and the rest.

This page is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Rules and tax treatment change: check the official source or ask a professional before you sign anything.