Pre-seed funding is essential for startups to begin operations, ensuring their venture is worthy of financing. Therefore, new founders often rely on investments offered by venture capital firms that believe in their growth potential.
This article outlines various investors who invest money in early stage companies that need help generating capital. Read on for more information about the top pre-seed VC firms that provide financial assistance to new startups.
Best Pre-Seed Venture Capital Firms
Investments by a venture capital firm are vital for a new startup that needs a substantial amount of money to grow and thrive. Check out this list of pre-seed investors for early stage startups in various industries.
1. Boost VC
- Location: San Mateo, CA
- Industries Include: (currently) DeSci, Ocean Dynamism, Robotics, and Virtual Reality
- Notable Portfolio Companies: Coinbase, Volley, Starfish Space, Radiant, Etherscan, FitXR, Deepgram, K2 Space
Founded in 2012 by Adam Draper and Brayton Williams, and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boost VC is an early stage venture capital firm with $400 million AUM. Boost VC is the first check for deep tech, and invests $500,000 in deep tech pre-seed startups (i.e., aerospace, VR/AR, energy, climate, robotics, crypto, bio, AI/ML, ocean, materials, and more).
Adam Draper, the Founder and Managing Director of Boost VC, is a two-time entrepreneur and fourth generation venture capitalist. Adam’s superpower is finding scrappy entrepreneurs that build things many would consider “impossible".
2. Twenty Seven Ventures
- Location: Cayman Islands
- Industries Include: Edtech and Future of Work
- Notable Portfolio Companies: Fluent and Preteckt
Founded in 2019 by Atin Batra, Twenty Seven Ventures, also known as 27V, backs founders building the future of learning and labor. The solo-GP firm leads pre-seed rounds and also invests at seed, focusing on global EdTech and Future of Work startups.
27V writes checks of $50,000 to $250,000 and reserves capital for follow-on investments. It has backed 28 companies across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, including Fluent and Preteckt.
3. RareBreed Ventures
- Location: Baltimore, Md.
- Industries Include: Business and Financial Services
- Notable Portfolio Companies: Mainstreet, Americana, EarlyBird, and Nectar
RareBreed Ventures is a pre-seed fund that invests in technology companies. It allows angel investors to become limited partners to receive substantial funds.
The firm helped raise $40 million in September 2022 in a joint venture with two other VC funds. It writes checks of $50,000 to $250,000 as the first or one of the first investors in a startup, and its investments have benefited founders by helping grow their companies. RareBreed Ventures has invested in a variety of companies, including Blank Beauty, Thousand Fell, Matrix, Pugo Health, and Triangle.
4. 2048 Ventures
- Location: New York, N.Y. and Boston, Mass.
- Industries Include: Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare, and Biotech
- Notable Portfolio Companies: Airspace Link, GlossGenius, and Soona
2048 Ventures is a thesis-driven early stage venture capital firm based in New York and Boston. It aims to be the first-check, highest-conviction lead investor in startups with strong data moats, backing visionary founders building the technologies of the future.
2048 Ventures writes $500,000 to $3 million checks and leads pre-seed and seed rounds in vertical AI, deep tech, healthcare, and biotech. It moves quickly, going from first meeting to a commitment to lead in 10 to 15 business days. The firm has backed more than 80 startups, including Airspace Link, GlossGenius, and Soona, and closed an oversubscribed $82 million Fund III in January 2026.
5. Precursor Ventures
- Location: San Francisco, Calif.
- Industries Include: Generalist (software and hardware)
- Notable Portfolio Companies: AnyRoad, Pandia Health, and Juniper Square
Precursor Ventures is a San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed firm founded in 2015 by solo GP Charles Hudson. It invests in people over product, backing founders in their first institutional round across software and hardware companies headquartered in North America.
Precursor typically invests up to $500,000 in pre-seed and seed rounds, aiming to be a meaningful first-round investor while leaving room for syndication. A high-volume investor making dozens of new investments a year, it has backed hundreds of startups, including AnyRoad, Pandia Health, and Juniper Square. Precursor is a Day One investor with no traction or metrics requirements, and it reviews every pitch it receives without requiring a warm introduction.
6. Bee Partners
- Location: San Francisco, Calif.
- Industries Include: AI, Robotics, and Deep Tech
- Notable Portfolio Companies: DeepScribe, InnerPlant, and C-Infinity
Bee Partners puts pre-seed founders at the forefront of advanced machine and human convergence. The firm’s team believes that advanced technology can assist healthcare professionals, using scientific intelligence through robotics. It seeks exceptional founders with a similar interest in frontier technologies that have the potential to dominate its specialized industries.
Over 15 years and four funds, Bee Partners has backed nearly 100 technical companies at inception. Roughly 60% of its portfolio companies historically reach Series A, and the portfolio has raised more than $2 billion in follow-on capital. Notable exits include TubeMogul's IPO, BuildingConnected (acquired by Autodesk), tbh (Facebook), and TensorStax (Snowflake).
7. Fulgur Ventures
- Location: Wilmington, Del.
- Industries Include: Bitcoin and the Lightning Network
- Notable Portfolio Companies: Breez, Voltage, and Blockstream
Founded in 2019, Fulgur Ventures backs founders building the Bitcoin economy, with a focus on the Lightning Network, a Layer-2 solution the firm sees as essential to everyday Bitcoin transactions. Its team combines decades of experience building and scaling companies in emerging industries, and it also launched Fulgur Asia, a Singapore-based arm covering the region.
Fulgur invests globally across stages, from pre-seed through pre-IPO, and provides advisory, mentoring, and regulatory guidance to help founders navigate the evolving cryptocurrency landscape. Its portfolio includes Breez, Voltage, Blockstream, OpenNode, and Amboss.
8. Lombardstreet Ventures
- Location: Silicon Valley (Menlo Park, Calif.)
- Industries Include: B2B SaaS, Developer Tools, and AI
- Notable Portfolio Companies: Calm, Brex, and FlutterFlow
Lombardstreet Ventures invests in pre-seed startups locally and outside California. It draws from talents worldwide and handles the creation of startups in California and other states. The company boasts a team of seasoned executives who work with a small group of favorable entrepreneurs.
One of Lombardstreet's most notable investments is Calm, the well-known sleep and meditation app. It has invested in more than 85 companies, with other portfolio names including Brex, FlutterFlow, and Albedo, and counts Turing and Kong among its unicorns.
9. Pear
- Location: Menlo Park, Calif.
- Industries Include: AI, Climate Tech, and SaaS
- Notable Portfolio Companies: DoorDash, Guardant Health, and Vanta
Pear isn't just a venture capital firm or early stage fund. Its team has founded, built, and scaled more than 13 companies, and it has seeded startups now worth more than $300 billion collectively. The firm’s focus areas include consumer, SaaS, enterprise tech, healthcare, deep tech, fintech, biotech, AI, and climate tech.
Pear offers pre-seed, seed, and follow-on investment in varying amounts, depending on a company’s stage. Plus, with its pre-seed bootcamp, PearX, founders with high-potential ideas can get help finding their target market, building their product, and laying a foundation for rapid growth.