Want to make sure you stay on top of the pre-seed startup market? Good, because I am starting up a new segment on my newsletter called Pre-seed Weekly Roundup. I’ll cover a few interesting pieces of news + wins from my former podcast guests.

Startup Pre-Seed News

• IndieVC shut down. IndieVC was one of the first alternative venture capital models that did much of the ground work for dozens of firms today. Sad day.

• Keenan writes a great overview on new space startup, Varda. Varda was cofounded by Founders Fund Principal, Delian Asparouhov, and is one of the hottest seed space startups on the market right now.

• Sora Schools, former Forward Thinking Founders guest, is hiring for admissions specialists. Sora Schools is funded by USV, Village Global, and other tier one firms. Respond to this email if you want an intro and we’ll talk.

• Undock and Superhuman hint at an integration. Learn more at Undock’s big upcoming launch here. Undock is competing with Calendly awkwardness + Zoom fatigue + agenda creation in effort for us to take back our time. And they may just pull it off.

• Paige Finn writes an excellent guide to syndicates. If you’ve ever thought about starting one or getting involved with a syndicate, this is the guide for you.

• 3LAU, a DJ I looked up as a kid, is trailblazing the way (and making millions) by putting on the largest NFT sale yet.

• Someone built a real life cards against humanity for startups. Startups can purchase land and expand their Kingdom. Pretty dang cool.

• Hustle Fund raises its 2nd fund of $33.6M. Hustle Fund is becoming one of the most well known funds in the pre-seed stage.

• Lambda School launches free live mini coding bootcamp for anyone to get an entry to coding for free.

Forward Thinking Founders Wins

As many of you know, I try to interview founders on my podcast before they find major success. When the founders raise capital, I also love to shout them out and cheer from the sidelines! In the last week:

• Therma raised $10.2M! I interviewed their founder before they raised any capital. See that interview here.

• Quadrant Eye got into Y Combinator!! We interviewed their founder before they raised any capital. See that interview here.

• Postscript raised $35M in their series B. We interviewed this team after their pre-seed round back in 2019. See that interview here.

Thanks for reading the pre-seed weekly roundup. See you next week!