Early on, everyone says the same thing:

“We’re in… just waiting for a lead.”

At pre-seed, I’ve watched founders chase a lead as if it were a golden ticket – Weeks of meetings. Endless updates. All for someone to “set the round.” Meanwhile, the people who actually believe in the company are already writing checks.

Most founders structure early rounds around finding a lead because that's how later-stage fundraising works — a lead investor prices the deal, takes a meaningful position, and signals to everyone else that someone credible has done the diligence. It's a rational framework. The problem is it doesn't map onto pre-seed reality at all. 

With SAFEs, there are no long NVCA docs to negotiate or time constraints with closings. The lead's traditional function no longer exists at this stage. So when an investor says, "we're in, just waiting for a lead," they're usually communicating uncertainty. One foot in, one foot out. And when you stack enough of those conditional commitments together, you don't build momentum. You build a round full of people who were never quite sure, waiting on each other to go first.

Find people with conviction. Close them. Move on.

Party rounds get a bad reputation for legitimate reasons. A lead can i) add strong momentum, ii) set the tone for the next round, and iii) possibly lead the next round. Those are real accelerants. But at the pre-seed stage, they're mostly nice-to-haves. What you actually need is a handful of angels, a few micro funds, maybe a strategic operator or two. People you trust, who have real conviction, and who you'd actually want on your cap table for the next ten years.

Once you’re raising a real seed round, everything changes. Especially once you’re raising $4–5M or more. Now you need someone to price the deal, take a real position, and pull the rest of the round together.

Early on, chasing a lead is like hiring a general before you have an army. It looks impressive, but it slows everything down. Nobody actually needs it.