Raising money
Pre-seed and seed round
A seed round is usually the first sizeable outside money a startup raises to find a repeatable way to win customers; a pre-seed round is the smaller money before it, often to build and test the first version.
Also called seed funding, seed stage, pre-seed funding, pre seed vs seed
Looking this up for a class, a job, or something you want to build? If it is the last one, nommi reads your idea before you spend months on it.
The labels are conventions, not legal categories, and investors draw the line between them differently. Both are often raised on a SAFE or a convertible note, and some seed rounds are priced rounds, where investors buy shares at an agreed price. Either way, you give up part of the company in exchange for the money.
This is not legal or tax advice, check with a lawyer or accountant.
When this shows up
Example, not a real founder: one investor calls your raise pre-seed and another calls it seed. You spend a week rewriting your deck around the label, when both were asking the same thing: what this money will prove.
What to do next
Write down what the money must prove before it runs out, and the date you will know. Use that, not the label, when you talk to investors.