Rallying investors is always an adventure.

Throughout my career, I’ve participated in raising Series A and B rounds for several tech companies. So when I founded Nimble Energy and began to pursue my first pre-seed round of investment, I assumed the path would be similar. It wasn’t.

But the process ended up providing my business with a lot more than money alone. Here are four lessons I learned along the way that might help those seeking early funding to find their footing—and perhaps some encouragement, too.

Leverage the Flexibility of the Pre-seed Stage

Early-stage funding rounds—including pre-seed or “friends and family” rounds—are different from later ones in numerous ways. For starters, they’re more likely to be raised on a SAFE or convertible note than as a priced round, as these instruments are easy to issue and can be handled on a rolling basis. We opted for a SAFE.

Companies looking for initial investment might also be pre-revenue or even pre-product. In fact, they might represent little more than an idea, some intellectual property, or a talented assembly of co-founders. When we started this round, we had just launched our minimum-viable product (MVP) and had signed a few clients.

The downside of fundraising at such an early stage is that you have limited tangible assets to showcase, such as revenue, clients, and those other hallmarks of “traction” investors look for. But the upside is that you have almost unlimited flexibility around your business plan, product, markets, messaging, and, well, pretty much everything else. Use it.

Don’t get locked into a mindset that there is just one route to success, and that route means raising an exact amount of money by an exact date from a specific type of investor.

Think about the near-infinite pathways your business could evolve along the way. The (probably limited) resources you have and how you can best use them. How your experience differentiates you from the pack. If you embrace this mindset, you’ll see you might actually have a lot of options on how to move forward, even if investors don’t immediately whip out their checkbooks after every meeting.

The larger a company grows, the harder it becomes to reinvent itself. But you’re not there yet, so harness that flexibility while you can. Be nimble. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

How You Tell Your Story Is As Important As the Story Itself

 When I was putting the pieces in place to launch Nimble Energy, I spent a lot of time writing a 40-page business plan packed with market research, a product roadmap, competitive analyses, financial models, and so on. While many people skip this step, it was an important exercise in convincing myself I was ready.

My first pitch deck was based heavily on this business plan. I adapted it based on investor pitch best practices and pulled in some nice visuals. But on the whole, it was my business plan in slide form, which is to say: kind of boring.

I found this out quickly as I started to pitch. While investors appreciated the depth of experience my team and I had, it was clear they weren’t getting excited about what we were doing based on the presentation. As a company that uses AI/ML methods, we were also getting lost in the sudden AI buzz.

So I started to iterate on how I told our story, testing out different ways to talk about what we’re doing, then gauging investor reactions. With each tweak, I could see engagement and enthusiasm increase and hear which phrases, stories, numbers, or differentiators were resonating most.

By the end of the pre-seed round, I found myself on the 37th version of the pitch deck. While the substance has barely changed from the original version, the way I talk about Nimble Energy has evolved drastically—and so have investor responses. Happily, this has helped improve our sales and marketing messaging, too.

Listen Hard to the Questions Investors Ask

 In some ways, pitching is like other forms of sales. In others, though, it’s a totally different ballgame.

The format of the meeting is largely the same: You’re on a call doing your presentation and hoping to get good buying signals.

But with investors, when you dig in on what motivates them, you’re only likely to get some details about the type of fund(s) they have and the companies they invest in. When you ask for feedback, either on the call or after, it’s likely to be short, generic, and minimally helpful. Many times, you’ll never get feedback at all. You might think you’re exactly right for them, and then they don’t invest.

Which is all to say: Investors are often even harder to read than most client prospects.

But I noticed that investors like to ask questions—and they typically ask really good ones. It was during the question period of calls I learned the most about them and their interests. The questions they posed were the answers I was seeking about them.

So I started writing down the questions investors asked during every call and comparing them to those asked by investors on previous calls. As I adjusted my pitch, I saw a meaningful shift in investor questions. They were more consistent. They were also less about the nuts and bolts of our business—our product, the problems we solve, our target markets, differentiators—and more about our traction and go-to-market strategy.

This shift turned out to be a good sign, because it meant  fewer doubts about the fundamentals of our business plan and more focus on how we were executing it.

Investor questions are likely the clearest feedback you’ll get. Keep record of them. And think hard about why they’re asking these particular questions and how you can better articulate the answers in your pitch.

Don’t Confuse Fundraising Success With a Strong Business Foundation

Fundraising is important. And for businesses that can’t scale by bootstrapping, it’s essential. But it’s only one aspect of building a business.

Like many founders, I find it exciting when we achieve a win, whether it’s a new client, product capability, partnership, or investor. I love seeing us grow in every way. But with investment, it can be particularly easy to confuse closing new funding with having a solid business foundation.

I see the announcements on LinkedIn almost daily that companies have raised new, often breathtaking sums. I’m pretty familiar with some of these companies and often find myself wondering: Does their business really justify that investment, or do they just have a founder who’s  good at fundraising?

As I worked through this round, I was resolved not to spend more than 5% of my time fundraising, on average. The round took longer than it might have if I’d spent 25% or 50% on it. But I felt fine with that tradeoff, knowing I was spending the vast majority of my time and energy growing our clients, team, sales, and product.

My top priority is building a strong business foundation—not just telling a great story. Not every company that announces a huge round is built on quicksand. But some are. I’ve seen it firsthand. When you get into the pitch-pitch-pitch mindset—especially if you’re good at it—it can be easy to forget that a solid business is about much more than raising money.

Keep a closer eye on your business than just your fundraising progress.

I don’t mean to make the process of securing early funding sound easy or prescribed—as if there is just one path forward. But if you can leverage the flexibility afforded by an early-stage enterprise, learn how to tell your story in a way that resonates with investors, and use their questions to better understand their interests, all while building a strong business foundation, you’ll be well on your way.