The Pre-Seed Podcast with Fexingo: Idea-Stage Founders, First Checks, and Earliest Funding

Episode 29 of The Pre-Seed Podcast explores a funding path many idea-stage founders overlook: non-dilutive grants. Lucas and Luna break down how the U.S. National Science Foundation's SBIR program offers up to $275,000 for early-stage deep-tech and software startups, with examples from companies like SRI International and Dexcom. They discuss the application process, key tips for writing a competi...

Episode 28 of The Pre-Seed Podcast: Lucas and Luna explore how idea-stage founders can form a customer advisory board before they have a product. Using the example of a fictional B2B SaaS founder named Maya, they walk through the concrete steps: identifying five ideal customer profiles, framing the ask without promising a finished product, running monthly 45-minute calls, and turning unstructured...

In this episode of The Pre-Seed Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into the strategic use of advisory shares for idea-stage startups. They break down the typical range of equity offered to advisors—from 0.5% to 2%—and walk through a real-world example of a B2B SaaS company that used a 1% advisory stake to land a former VP of Sales as their first customer reference. The hosts also discuss common pitfalls...

Most cold emails from pre-seed founders land unread. Lucas and Luna break down what actually works when you're sending outreach to angel investors who don't know you exist. They walk through a specific cold email that got a $25,000 check without a warm intro — the subject line, the opening sentence, the ask, and why the founder included a one-sentence customer story instead of a deck link. They al...

Episode 25 of The Pre-Seed Podcast tackles the intimidating task of building a financial model when you have zero revenue and no historical data. Lucas walks through the Lean Canvas approach adapted for finance, explaining how to project costs, estimate unit economics from industry benchmarks, and model three funding scenarios. He shares the specific three-statement model template he used at his o...

Lucas and Luna break down the science behind a winning pre-seed pitch deck. They analyze the specific structure that top idea-stage founders use, including the problem slide, the solution, and the ask. Lucas shares a surprising stat: the average investor spends just 2 minutes 47 seconds on a deck, and founders who lead with customer proof close at 3x the rate. They also discuss the common mistake...

In this episode of The Pre-Seed Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into customer development interviews for idea-stage founders. They break down why talking to 20 potential users beats building in isolation, using examples from Dropbox and Superhuman. Lucas shares his three-question framework to avoid biased answers and get real signals. Luna reveals common mistakes founders make, like pitching instead...

In this episode of The Pre-Seed Podcast, Lucas and Luna break down the cold outreach strategies that early-stage founders can use to land investor meetings without warm intros. They walk through a concrete case: a fintech founder who sent 200 cold LinkedIn messages to prospective angel investors, tracked response rates by industry vertical, and refined her pitch based on feedback — all before buil...

How do you convince a pre-seed investor you have real traction when you're still building your product? In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a practical strategy: gathering customer references before you have customers. They break down the 'Reference Ready' framework — a structured approach that founder Jenna Ruiz used to land a $250,000 pre-seed check from a top micro-VC. You'll learn how to i...

Episode 20 of The Pre-Seed Podcast: Lucas and Luna explore how pre-seed founders can access pro bono legal support for incorporation, IP, and founder agreements. They break down the role of law school clinics, nonprofit legal accelerators like the Startup Law Lab, and the specific documents every idea-stage founder should prioritise before raising capital. Lucas shares why one Y Combinator founder...

Episode 19 dives into a counterintuitive pre-seed problem: how do you get credible customer references when you have zero customers yet? Lucas and Luna break down the playbook used by early-stage founders to secure testimonials, case studies, and social proof before their first sale. They cover specific tactics like offering free pilot access in exchange for feedback, leveraging advisory board mem...

Episode 18 of The Pre-Seed Podcast: Lucas and Luna break down the often-overlooked differences between angel investors, micro-VCs, and syndicates at the idea stage. They discuss real trade-offs beyond the check size—strategic value, terms, and long-term fit—using concrete examples like a solo founder who picked the wrong investor and how it affected their next round. Lucas shares a framework for e...

Most early-stage founders think they need a product before they can make money. Episode 17 of The Pre-Seed Podcast argues the opposite: pre-sales — collecting revenue before you've built anything — is the strongest signal you can send to investors. Lucas and Luna break down how one B2B SaaS founder presold $47,000 worth of licenses using only a Figma mockup and a 30-minute discovery call script. T...

Episode 16 of The Pre-Seed Podcast with Fexingo dives into the mechanics of the SAFE note — the most popular pre-seed instrument in 2026. Lucas and Luna walk through a real-world case: a two-founder SaaS startup that raised $350,000 using Y Combinator's latest SAFE template without hiring a lawyer. They break down valuation caps, discount rates, the 'most favoured nation' clause, and the single bi...

Lucas and Luna break down what every idea-stage founder needs to know before signing their first term sheet. They walk through a real case: a $500,000 pre-seed round where the founders nearly gave up too much control. You'll learn the three specific terms that matter most — valuation, liquidation preference, and board composition — and why 'standard' docs often aren't in your favor. Plus, a practi...

Lucas and Luna break down how idea-stage founders can build a functional MVP in a single weekend using no-code tools like Bubble, Adalo, and Airtable. They walk through a real example: a founder who validated a marketplace idea with a weekend prototype and landed a $50,000 pre-seed check. Learn the three-step framework: pick one feature, use the right tool, test with five users. No coding experien...

In this episode of The Pre-Seed Podcast, Lucas and Luna tackle one of the trickiest early decisions: finding the right cofounder when you're still at the idea stage. They break down why 65% of startups fail due to cofounder conflict (Noam Wasserman's data), share the 'three-date rule' for vetting potential partners, and walk through a real case of a founder who found her technical cofounder on a n...

Most pre-seed rounds take six months or more. This episode breaks down exactly how one SaaS founder went from zero revenue to a $500,000 pre-seed close in just sixty days. Lucas and Luna walk through the specific tactics: how she built a micro-waitlist of 400 beta users before writing a line of product code, how she used that waitlist to generate buy-me-a-coffee-dot-com-slash-fexingo-style micro-c...

Episode 11 of The Pre-Seed Podcast: Lucas and Luna break down cold outreach strategies for idea-stage founders who don't have an existing network of angel investors. They walk through a specific case study of a founder who landed a $50,000 check by writing 217 personalized emails, using LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters, and offering a simple revenue-share note. The hosts discuss template structure...

In Episode 10 of The Pre-Seed Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how idea-stage founders without existing investor connections can still raise a first angel round. They break down a real-world case study of a founder who cold-emailed 200 angels, converted 12, and secured $350K using a warm-introduction strategy built from scratch. The conversation covers the exact email template that worked, the 'inv...

Lucas and Luna break down how idea-stage founders can recruit their first 100 beta users on a zero-dollar marketing budget. They examine the specific playbook behind Notion's early invite-only growth — how a single public roadmap and a few hundred power users built a waitlist of over 1 million — and contrast it with Dropbox's referral loop that added 390,000 users in 15 months. The hosts walk thro...

Lucas and Luna dive into the art of building a launch waitlist for pre-product startups. They break down the story of Mailchimp — which grew to 12 million users before ever taking venture funding — and unpack the specific strategies founders can use to attract early signups with nothing but a landing page and a clear value proposition. The hosts discuss why a waitlist is more than a vanity metric,...

In this episode of The Pre-Seed Podcast, Lucas and Luna tackle a question every idea-stage founder faces: how do you know your startup idea is worth building before you write a line of code? They break down the concrete validation method used by the founders of Buffer, who built a landing page and collected email signups before the product existed. Lucas explains the 'smoke test' approach—selling...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna tackle a topic every idea-stage founder dreads: how to split equity with a cofounder before the company has any real revenue or product. They break down the concept of vesting schedules, discuss the Slicing Pie model for dynamic equity splits, and walk through a real example of what happens when a founding team of two splits 50-50 but one person drops out after thre...

Episode 5 of The Pre-Seed Podcast dives into the tricky art of pricing for idea-stage startups. Lucas and Luna explore why pre-revenue founders often undervalue their offering, using the real-world case of Buffer's transparent pricing experiment and the lessons from Atlassian's zero-sales-team model. They break down cost-plus, value-based, and competitor-based pricing, and explain why charging bas...