Startup Studio Debuts New Seed Fund to Support Pre-Product Teams
San Francisco-based studio will invest $250K-$750K in pre-product teams, providing hands-on building support and cutting time to first revenue by up to 60%
SAN FRANCISCO, November 28, 2025 — VentureCraft Studio today announced the launch of a $40 million pre-product seed fund designed exclusively for founders who have not yet built a product. The fund will deploy initial checks of $250,000 to $750,000 into 40-50 B2B SaaS and AI-native startups over the next three years, pairing capital with intensive studio resources to de-risk the earliest stages of company building.
Unlike traditional venture funds that require minimum viable products or early traction, VentureCraft’s model accepts teams at the idea stage, providing embedded engineering, design, and go-to-market support to accelerate path to product and first customers. The studio structure allocates 30% of the fund directly to operational support, including a 12-person in-house team of product managers, full-stack engineers, and customer discovery specialists who work alongside founders for the first 12-18 months.
The launch comes as pre-seed funding activity has demonstrated remarkable resilience, with U.S. startups raising $965 million across 5,660 instruments in Q3 2025 alone, according to Carta’s latest market data . Despite macroeconomic pressures affecting later stages, pre-seed companies remain largely insulated, with median valuation caps holding steady at $5-7.5 million for traditional SaaS startups. However, less than 20% of pre-seed teams currently secure paying customers before raising institutional capital, creating a critical gap that VentureCraft’s hands-on model directly addresses.
“We’re targeting the zero-to-one phase that traditional VCs have abandoned,” said VentureCraft co-founder and CEO Sarah Chen. “Our data shows that teams with dedicated studio support launch products 40% faster and achieve 2.3x higher survival rates through Series A compared to solo founders. We’re not just writing checks—we’re assigning senior engineers to architect the first version, running 50-100 customer discovery interviews alongside founders, and opening our rolodex of 200+ enterprise design partners.”
The fund focuses on vertical SaaS, AI-enabled infrastructure, and future-of-work technologies, sectors where Carta data indicates pre-seed round sizes have grown 15-20% year-over-year. VentureCraft’s investment committee includes former founders from Airtable, Notion, and Zapier, who evaluate teams based on founder-market fit, technical depth, and proprietary insights rather than demos. The studio takes 10-12% equity at pre-money valuations of $3-5 million, using post-money SAFEs with most-favored-nation provisions.
Portfolio companies gain access to VentureCraft’s proprietary “Market Validation Engine,” a 90-day sprint that systematizes customer discovery and pilot acquisition. The process has helped previous studio alumni secure paying customers from brands like Shopify, Slack, and Modern Treasury before closing their seed rounds. The fund reserves 50% of capital for follow-on investments, with automatic pro-rata rights in subsequent rounds.
Applications for the first batch of 12 teams open December 15, 2025, with a rolling admissions process. VentureCraft plans to invest in 15 companies annually, prioritizing technical founding teams and domain experts solving acute operational pain points. The studio will host quarterly demo days exclusively for a curated group of 30 seed and Series A funds, creating a direct pipeline to downstream capital.
About VentureCraft Studio
Founded in 2021 by repeat entrepreneurs Sarah Chen and Marcus Rodriguez, VentureCraft Studio has previously incubated 18 companies through its angel syndicate model, achieving three exits and a portfolio-wide revenue run rate of $42 million. The team combines decades of operator experience from companies like Stripe, Figma, and Ramp. VentureCraft’s mission is to institutionalize pre-product company building, providing founders with the same resources available to later-stage startups at day zero.
Media Contact
Sarha Al-Mansoori
Director of Corporate Communications
G42
Email: media@g42.ai
Phone: +971 2555 0100
Website: www.g42.ai
