How to Find the Right Pre-Seed Investors for Your B2B SaaS Startup
By Martin Tobias, Managing Partner
Martin Tobias is Managing Partner at Incisive Ventures
(incisive.vc), where he has made 75+ pre-seed investments over five years. He was an early investor in DocuSign.
Category: Fundraising
After 75+ pre-seed investments, I can tell you most failed fundraises aren't about the company — they're about founders pitching investors who were never going to write that check. Here's how to actually find the right fit.
Most pre-seed founders make the same mistake: they build a list of 150 investors and start pitching. They work hard, send good emails, get some meetings. And then... nothing. Six months later, they're exhausted and confused. The problem isn't their startup. The problem is fit. After >300 pre-seed investments over two decades, I can tell you that most failed fundraises aren't about the company — they're about founders pitching investors who were never going to write that check. Wrong stage. Wrong sector. Wrong check size. Wrong thesis. Here's how to actually find the right investors for your B2B SaaS startup. --- ## The Fit Problem Nobody Talks About Venture is a matching game. Every VC has a thesis — a specific theory about what kinds of companies they invest in, at what stage, for what check size. Most of those theses are never written down anywhere. As a founder, your job is to find investors whose unwritten thesis matches your startup. That's harder than it sounds. A tier-1 VC who writes $5M Series A checks is not the right investor for your $500K pre-seed round — even if they love your space. An investor who focuses on consumer apps has no business investing in B2B infrastructure. An investor who has already backed your direct competitor is legally blocked from backing you. Every wasted meeting costs you 2-4 weeks and real momentum. At pre-seed, you don't have that to burn. --- ## What "Right Fit" Actually Means Before you build your investor list, you need to know exactly what you're looking for: Stage fit: Pre-seed means different things to different funds. Some write $250K checks into idea-stage companies. Others call themselves pre-seed but really want $50K MRR first. Know the difference. Ask explicitly: "What does your ideal pre-seed company look like at the time of investment?" Sector fit: B2B SaaS is a broad category. A VC who specializes in vertical SaaS for construction has no edge investing in horizontal workflow tools. Find investors who have a genuine thesis in your specific corner — not just general enterprise software. Check size fit: Most pre-seed rounds are $500K–$2M. If you're raising $750K, you want investors who write $250K–$500K checks. A fund that typically writes $5M checks will pass — you're too small to matter to their returns math. Portfolio fit: Look at who they've already backed. If a VC has invested in your direct competitor, they're out (conflict of interest). If they've invested in adjacent companies in your space, that's actually a green light — they understand the problem and have conviction in the category. Geography fit: Less important than it used to be, but some funds still have geographic mandates. Don't waste time on a fund that only backs NYC startups if you're in Austin. --- ## How to Build the Right List Most founders start with Google searches and AngelList. That's fine for a starting point. But those lists are incomplete, outdated, and not filtered for fit. Here's a more systematic approach: 1. Start with comps. Find 5-10 companies similar to yours that raised pre-seed in the last 2 years. Who invested in them? Crunchbase and LinkedIn are your friends here. Those investors have already proven they invest in companies like yours. 2. Look at portfolios backward. Take any VC you're considering and read their entire portfolio. What's the pattern? What does every company they've backed have in common? If your startup doesn't fit that pattern, move on. 3. Use thesis signals. Most partners post on Twitter/X, write blog posts, or speak at conferences. Read everything they've published in the last year. The partners who write about your specific problem are the ones worth targeting. 4. Ask your network. Warm intros are still the highest-conversion path into a VC meeting. But ask specifically: "Do you know any investors who focus on B2B SaaS for [your specific vertical]?" Generic intro requests produce generic results. 5. Use AI matching tools. Full disclosure: I built one. [ InvestorMatch.Pro ]( https://investormatch.pro ) reads your pitch deck and surfaces 20 investors ranked by fit. It's free, no account required. I built it for exactly the problem I'm describing — most founders don't have a network to tap, and the existing tools are either expensive or inaccurate. --- ## The 20-Investor Rule Here's my actual advice: build a list of 20 genuinely well-fit investors and pitch them in a focused 6-week window. Not 100 investors. Not 50. Twenty. Why 20? - It's manageable enough to personalize every email - It's focused enough to create urgency (when 5 investors are all in diligence at the same time, you have leverage) - If 20 well-fit investors all pass, that's real signal — something about the pitch or the business needs to change The founders who close pre-seed rounds quickly aren't the ones with the biggest lists. They're the ones with the most precise lists. --- ## Red Flags to Avoid The famous-name trap. Sequoia is probably not the right investor for your pre-seed round. Nor is a16z. Mega-funds at pre-seed usually means a scout program or an exception — and you're competing with every other startup in the world for their attention. Focus on the funds where your deal could actually be one of their top 10 investments this year. The warm intro obsession. Yes, warm intros help. But a cold email to a perfectly-fit investor will outperform a warm intro to the wrong investor every time. Don't spend 3 months chasing intros — spend that time finding the right investors and writing better cold emails. The spray-and-pray list. I've seen founders build lists of 200 investors and blast them all at once. This destroys your reputation, kills urgency, and signals desperation. VCs talk to each other. A focused raise is always better. --- ## The Bottom Line Finding the right pre-seed investors is a research problem before it's a sales problem. Most founders skip the research phase and go straight to pitching. That's why most fundraises take 12 months instead of 3. Do the fit analysis first. Build the right list. Then pitch with conviction. If you want a shortcut on the research phase, upload your deck to [ InvestorMatch.Pro ]( https://investormatch.pro ) — it's free and takes 60 seconds. No card, no account. I built it because this problem costs founders too much time. --- Martin Tobias is Managing Partner at [Incisive Ventures]( https://incisive.vc ), where he has made 75+ pre-seed investments over five years. He was an early investor in DocuSign.
Tags: pre-seed, seed, investors, venture capital, pitch deck, startup