A lot of inception-stage fundraising information is already available in the public domain, so our intention with this guide is more to encourage you as a Founder to take a step back – even before you embark on the fundraising process – to think even at the earliest stages about how you want to build your company...and to what end.

We strongly encourage you to consider how your startup fits within your larger life plan, and contemplate the sacrifices that you may be making on this journey. This is a critical first step in determining whether you should build a startup in the first place.

We also want to provide our perspective on what we see as the obligations first investors have to assist with company build. There are a lot of people who will provide inception- stage funds – but many of them won’t provide a sufficient level of partnership required to get a startup off the ground. (Learn what partnership means to us.) We hope after reading this, you come away with a strong sense of what you should be looking for in a ‘partner- investor’ at the inception-stage / pre-Seed, to make the most of equity-for-capital trade.

We wish you the best and that you ultimately realize your vision.

Links
Learn how Bee Partners uses vector-driven analysis to identify Founder-partners.
Read Bee Partners’ position paper, Human Machine Convergence: The Intersection of Early Investment and Profound Opportunity.

About Bee Partners
Founded in 2009, Bee Partners is a pre-Seed venture capital firm that partners with revolutionary Founders working at the forefront of human-machine convergence across technologies that include robotics, AI, voice, i4.0, and synthetic biology. The firm leverages a singular approach to detecting new and emerging patterns of business as well as inside access to fertile but often overlooked entrepreneurial ecosystems to identify early opportunity in large, untapped markets. Bee’s portfolio companies consistently realize growth at levels that outstrip industry averages and secure follow-on capital from the world's top VCs.