Life at a Pre-Seed Startup: Fast, Imperfect, and Full of Heart
Working at a pre-seed startup often looks glamorous from the outside. People fantasize about the speed, the freedom, the thrill of building something from nothing.
And yes, there is truth to that picture. Things do move fast, sometimes thrillingly so. But what’s often missing is just how uncomfortable it can feel.
Pre-seed isn’t about perfect execution. It’s about moving forward even when things are messy, incomplete, and uncertain. That’s the reality - and the beauty of it.
Ship First, Fix Later
At this stage, the most dangerous thing you can do is stand still.
You don’t spend weeks polishing edge cases or debating small design details. You ship. You put it in front of users. You learn.
And yes - sometimes that means things go wrong in the worst possible moments. We’ve had our platform crash in the middle of a live demo. We’ve had brand new bugs appear while showing the exact feature a customer asked for. Timing, in those moments, can be everything.
But that’s the reality of pre-seed: the unexpected will happen. What matters isn’t how many problems you face, but how you respond. If you’re not comfortable with constant unpredictability, this probably isn’t the space for you.
The Search for the Right Team
One of the biggest challenges wasn’t just building product - it was building the team.
Sometimes you bring in someone who feels like the perfect fit, but it turns out they’re not. Other times, someone surprises you with skills or energy you didn’t even know you needed.
It’s a lot like waking up on Christmas morning as a kid. Sometimes you unwrap exactly what you wanted. Other times, it’s something unexpected that turns out to be perfect. And occasionally, you get something you want to love, but deep down you know it doesn’t fit - and you have to move on.
That’s pre-seed hiring. The faster you recognize when something isn’t working - and act on it - the better for everyone.
A Team That Feels Like Owners
When you do get the right mix, the feeling is electric.
Nobody says “that’s not my job.” A designer rewrites product copy. An engineer suggests pricing changes. A PM jumps into support. Because at pre-seed, every decision matters, and everyone feels it.
We even have teammates who constantly switch hats. One joked about “starting the morning with the sales hat, swapping to the finance hat after lunch, and ending the day with the HR hat.” That’s just what survival looks like at this stage.
And when something breaks - which it always does - you don’t wait for the “right person” to fix it. You fix it together. The intensity can be overwhelming, but it forges a bond that feels more like co-founders than coworkers.
The Emotional Rollercoaster
The highs and lows come daily.
One morning, a release lands and users tell you it’s the best thing they’ve seen. By the afternoon, a bug wipes out hours of work.
But it’s not just numbers or charts. It’s the feeling that takes over your body when an early customer signs on - or when you see your product actually helping in the wild.
The other day, one of our early users sent us a message: thanks to Autoplay, they uncovered an issue quietly impacting more than 800 daily users. Now, they’re redesigning part of their platform to fix it.
The sense of fulfillment in that moment was incredible. Messages like this fuel our drive to work harder every single day - to deliver the best experience possible and truly help our users.
Ideas Are Cheap, Execution Isn’t
As one of our founders put it:
“We all thought of that idea that eventually sold for a billion dollars.
Ideas are rarely unique. With over 7 billion people on the planet, the chances that an idea exists only in your mind is almost impossible.
But executing the impossible, and turning an idea into reality, takes very few people with the determination, self-belief, and competence to do so.”
That’s the truth of pre-seed: the idea is just the spark. Everything that matters happens in execution.
Why It’s Worth It
Pre-seed isn’t glamorous. It’s messy, unpredictable, and sometimes brutally hard. But it’s also one of the few times in your career where you feel the direct impact of every decision.
You see adoption happen in real time. You hear feedback straight from users. You watch the product evolve daily. And you get to build it alongside a handful of people who care just as much as you do.
That’s why it’s worth it. Not because it’s easy, but because it matters.
Pre-seed is about embracing imperfection, moving too fast to be comfortable, and learning to love the chaos.
It’s not for everyone. But for those who do it - it’s unforgettable.