The pre-seed ecosystem is here to stay: Notes from the Pre-Seed Summit, our event with Eximius Ventures

Explore key takeaways from the Pre-Seed Summit hosted by WeWork Labs and Eximius Ventures. Learn about the pre-seed funding journey, insights from founders and VCs, and the growth of India's startup ecosystem.

It’s rare to see a bee-line for an event nearly an hour before it’s about to begin. It’s even rarer to hear the stories of founders who travelled nearly 1,500 kilometres just to attend an event you’re hosting. One could only describe the energy in the room as palpable—with guests trying to get their registrations in order, to the sounds of networking filling every inch of the room, keeping up a lively atmosphere across the floor.

To honour this enduring spirit, we at WeWork Labs hosted the Pre-Seed Summit in collaboration with Eximius Ventures on November 14 at WeWork Forum, Gurugram.

At WeWork Labs, we’ve hosted over 170 events till date, but with each passing event, we still focus on giving our attendees the most value-added experience possible.

We began this event with the official launch of the Pre-Seed guide—a definitive piece of literature on the various stages of the pre-seed journey, curated with experts from the industry on the various do’s and don’t’s for a founder to do while trying to get that first early cheque.

At the event, we wanted to take this opportunity to delve into the subject further in a manner that only justifies the enduring spirits that founders carry with them on their journey to becoming a leading company in the Indian ecosystem. To ensure that our guests had a well-rounded perspective on the subject, we curated two power-packed panels—one featuring founders and the other featuring leading venture capitalists.

Backing the next big thing

From the perspective of venture capitalists, we hosted a panel of experts with diverse experience in backing companies at different stages—from early to late-stage ventures. The panel included Vaas Bhaskar, Partner at Elevation Capital; Kitty Agarwal, Partner at Info Edge Ventures; Preeti S., Partner at Eximius Ventures; and Ishaan Khosla, Founding Partner at Huddle Ventures. They shared key insights on how big bets are evaluated, whether India is prepared for patient capital, and what the next decade of venture capital might look like.

“It’s incredible how India has understood the importance of Pre-Seed capital,” said Preeti, setting the tone for the discussion. “If you compare this to global standards, they’ve taken more decades to understand that pre-seed is an important stage of Investing. If you look at India, the primary way to do business has been family businesses which continue to dominate… for innovation to kick in that disrupts the status quo, you would need capital that can kickstart and fuel growth.”

Preeti’s take on what founder’s should do before raising a pre-seed round

• Clarity on roadmap
• Provide proof on how this current team is the right one to win
• Focus on customer love

The decade past for Indian ventures has been nothing short of vibrant. We had several tech companies in the late stage make their debuts in public markets, and a landmark month in August for venture funding. Within this context, Ishaan noted that it was particularly an interesting time for India. He further said that early on, there was always ambiguity with Indian ventures and if businesses within them would eventually work out because we had not seen enough successful examples. “The last few years markets have opened up tremendously… and their success has given a lot of founders the conviction to build in the space.”

Ishaan’s take on what a founder should do before raising a pre-seed round

• Have a deep sense of clarity on execution role
• Map out an execution roadmap for the next 12-15 months

For any business, fundamentally, at some point they would have to think about pivots. “Pivots are quite normal,” says Vaas. “Almost every successful company has pivoted something in their model at some point of time. In the early days if you think about what causes pivots and what are successful pivots. You start with a hypothesis, the severity of the pain point doesn’t exist, that's a good starting point. Either a structural reason or consumer behaviour that’s a good sign of thinking about pivot. Ultimately Most important decisions, most pivots are a gut feeling. Even before the data tells you, you all can feel it, it's a good time to pivot.”

Vaas’s take on what a founder must do before raising a pre-seed round

• Needs to be obsessed with customers, customer backward thinking
• Must be resilient
• Must be realistic—you know what you don’t know

Addressing if the Indian ecosystem is ready for patient capital—the art of investing early and holding onto your investment, Kitty responded in the affirmative. “The ecosystem appreciates this at least, because of the outcomes that have come out,” she said. “If you are trying to build a generational company, trying to change something in India, a consumer habit it takes a long time to build a lasting company. It takes at least 10 years for a company to go to IPO, maybe some of them go faster or slower ... The minute they know there's a shareholder who will run the marathon with you, it helps you at least psychologically, it just helps to know there’s someone out there with you.”

Kitty’s take on what a founder should do before raising the first round

• Index of skillset and how that can be used to solve a given problem—have they identified a co-founder
• Place great quality of engagement, love for a product even at the earliest stage
• Tinker around with ideas before raising capital

Unfolding the Pre-Seed to Unicorn Journey

India has emerged as the world’s third-largest startup economy, boasting nearly 111 unicorns across diverse sectors such as e-commerce, healthtech, edtech, and more. This growth has not only highlighted the country's vibrant entrepreneurial spirit but also gave the audience a glimpse into the audacious spirit that it takes to join the coveted unicorn founder club.

Moderated by Pearl Agarwal, the session on unfolding the unicorn journey featured Mohit Tandon, Co-founder of Delhivery, and Amit Lakhotia, Founder of Park+. Discussions kicked off with Pearl setting the tone by asking Mohit about finding the competitive edge of integrating technology into logistics.

“Actually, Delhivery first started as a food delivery service—very few people know this,” Mohit revealed, adding that the initial stages involved meticulous groundwork. By spending six months delivering orders and interacting with customers, the team identified various pain points in the logistics sector. “We realized there was an engineering gap in logistics, which is why no large players existed in the space. We figured that addressing this gap could build a scalable business,” he explained candidly. Today, Delhivery stands as a leading logistics player with a valuation of $3.4 billion, according to Tracxn.

Mohit’s take on fundraising

• Your pitch should be your business
• Find an investor who is aligned with your goals as a business.

The conversation quickly moved to Amit, who was asked about his journey building two category creating startups. “I’ve joined early stages, built sizeable businesses, seen IPOs, a bit of confidence around if you pick the right consumer problems the opportunities are massive. Most of these companies that I was with took less than 5 years to go from a couple of 100 million to then finally being listed. So when scale happens on the internet businesses, it happens very fast.”

Amit’s take on taking the biggest problems head on

• Motivation- It’s important to keep your team motivated.
• Celebrate small wins- To keep people interested, it’s important to celebrate the small wins.

Exclusive VC/Founder Connect Roundtables

It would be remiss to not highlight the exemplary success we had at our exclusive VC and Founder Connect roundtables. We noticed that most often founders at the early stages of their journey, rarely get face-time with an investor to talk about their ideas or brainstorm about goings-on of the startup ecosystem.

Across the 7 roundtables we curated, the energy was at an all-time high, with founders and VC’s buzzing across the room. Aakash Goyal, Co-founder and General Partner at Sparrow Capital took on the challenge of explaining the real reason why VC’s say no at his roundtable, while Mudit Narain, Vice President at Blume Ventures addressed how founders can establish strategic partnerships and early sales in their journey.

On the founder’s end we saw ⁠Amit Singh, Founder at Misfits & Shuttl addressed attendees on how to achieve product market fit, while Jasveer Singh, Co-founder and CEO at Hood touched on how the foundations can for a good founding team can be made early on.

Here’s a summary of what other conversations took place:

• ⁠Deepak Tuli, Founder at Eka.care spoke on Customer Discovery and Product Validation and finding methods for gathering feedback.
• ⁠Romit Mehta, Vice President at Lightspeed India Partners, spoke on how venture capitalists can support founders beyond capital.
• Shrishti Sahu, Managing Partner at Swadharma Source Venture (SSV), touched on everything to do with maintaining the Founder-Investor Relationship and how strong, transparent relationships between founders and investors are built.

We also put our team to the task of describing the event in three words, here’s how they did!

Arvind Radhakrishnan, Head of WeWork Labs- Necessary, value-adding, founder-focused.
Aniket Jagtap, Manager, WeWork Labs- Novel, Impactful, Bustling
Mohini Kumar, Assistant Manager- Value-driven, Ambitious, and Grounding.
Shenjit Basu, Senior Lead, Brand and Partnerships- Interactive, Knowledgable and Well-Rounded.