📘Carta’s Q3 Pre-Seed Report for Founders

🔥 Inside the Playbook of Top VCs

🚀 What Great VCs Never Tell Founders

🔥 What Great VCs Really Do (That Most Founders Never See)

Every founder thinks they know how venture capital works.

But what this guide reveals is something most never get to experience: how truly exceptional VCs operate behind the scenes — and why it changes everything for the founders they back.

Here are the insights that hit hardest:

👉 Great VCs aren’t just capital — they’re catalysts

They help founders sharpen strategy, build hiring clarity, and avoid early-stage mistakes that quietly kill 90% of startups.

👉 They don’t bet on ideas — they bet on learning loops

Top VCs look for founders who test, iterate, and adapt fast.
Not the smartest pitch — but the fastest learner.

👉 They know when to push, when to protect, and when to get out of the way

The best VCs don’t micromanage.
They challenge assumptions, open doors, and act as a force multiplier — not a bottleneck.

👉 They build networks founders could never create alone

From talent to customers to co-investors, great VCs create momentum long before revenue catches up.

👉 And most importantly: they’re partner-first, not power-first

Bad VCs add pressure.
Good VCs add clarity.
Great VCs add leverage.

The difference is everything.

If you're thinking of raising, or simply want to understand the investor mindset at the highest level, this guide is a must-read.

📘 Want the full breakdown of how top-tier VCs think, choose founders, and create outsized outcomes?

Download the complete eBook and get the insights every founder wishes they had earlier. 👇️ 

🚀 The Investor Lists Founders Crave

🔑 Unlock the Investors Backing 2026 Wins

🔥 Raising Capital in 2026? Here’s the Shortcut Founders Wish They Had Earlier

Fundraising shouldn’t feel like wandering through a VC maze with no map.
Yet most founders pitch in the dark — wrong rooms, wrong investors, wrong timing.

This new guide flips that completely.

Instead of guessing who invests in what, you get a curated, up-to-date, founder-friendly pack of investor lists that reveal who’s actually writing checks across today’s hottest categories: AI, Fintech, SaaS, Deep Tech, Blockchain, and more.

What makes it powerful?

👉 It saves months of investor research
You know exactly which firms, angels, and networks match your stage and category.

👉 It helps you reverse-engineer successful raises
49 AI startups with $100M+ rounds — broken down so you can study positioning, timing, and storytelling.

👉 It removes the guesswork from outreach
500+ active angels, 530+ angel networks, and category-specific VCs — all in one place.

👉 And yes, it includes real pitch decks that actually worked
50+ winning decks to model your next raise.

If you're gearing up for a 2026 fundraise, this isn’t just a list — it’s a fundraising GPS.

📘 Want the full investor pack with every list, breakdown, and shortcut? 👉 Grab instant access to every list here.

📘Carta’s Q3 Pre-Seed Report for Founders

🔍 Inside Carta’s Pre-Seed Breakdowns

🔥 What Carta’s New Pre-Seed Report Reveals About Early-Stage Funding

If you’re raising at the pre-seed stage, the landscape is shifting faster than most founders realize — and Carta’s latest report breaks down exactly what’s happening behind the scenes.

This isn’t just another data dump.
It’s a snapshot of how the earliest checks are actually being written in 2025 — what’s standard, what’s negotiable, and what’s suddenly non-negotiable.

Here’s what stood out:

👉 SAFEs still dominate — but terms are getting sharper
Founders are accepting tighter structures, and investors are pushing for more clarity around caps and ownership outcomes.

👉 Convertible notes are quietly making a comeback
Interest rates, timelines, and investor expectations are shifting — and it’s changing how these instruments get used.

👉 Valuation caps are stabilizing (finally)
After years of volatility, pre-seed caps are showing more consistency across markets, giving founders a clearer benchmark.

👉 Discounts matter more than ever
Investors are treating discount terms as a core risk-reward lever, not a minor detail.

👉 Pre-money vs post-money SAFEs isn’t founder-friendly by default
Understanding dilution math here can save founders from painful surprises.

👉 Where you raise matters
Carta highlights the top 15 metros where pre-seed activity is heating up — and some rising cities may surprise you.

If you're preparing for a 2025–2026 raise, this report helps you walk into investor conversations with facts, leverage, and confidence.

📘 Want the full breakdown, benchmarks, and term-by-term insights? Read the complete report here 👇️ 

🚀 100+ Gamma Prompt Library

🚀 100+ Prompts from Gamma’s Library

PowerPoint Might Finally Have Met Its Match

If you create decks for work, you’re going to want to see this.

Gamma just launched a massive new prompt library—100+ ready-to-use prompts designed to help you build stunning decks, proposals, and carousels without ever touching PowerPoint again.

And it’s not just one-size-fits-all prompts.

They’ve built tailored sets for:

➡️ Consultants
➡️ Marketers
➡️ Sales teams
➡️ Educators
➡️ Anyone who builds presentations daily

But here’s where it gets really interesting…

Gamma also dropped new API and workflow guides that automate the work most teams waste hours on:

⚡ Auto-send pitch decks the moment a deal closes
⚡ Summarize webinars into ready-to-share decks
⚡ Turn YouTube videos into 5-slide insight briefs
⚡ Auto-generate custom proposals from a prompt
⚡ Create social carousels instantly from a topic list

Basically: your entire presentation workflow, automated.

If you’ve been looking for a smarter, faster, more modern way to communicate ideas, this is worth exploring.

👉 Access the full prompt library here.

🎯 Startups Buzz

⚡13 Questions Top Candidates Now Ask Founders

The interview dynamic has flipped. Today’s best candidates don’t just answer questions—they evaluate the founder, the business model, and the company’s real odds of survival. A new set of 13 founder-proof questions is becoming the standard for top talent, revealing how you think, operate, and make decisions under pressure.

These questions uncover blind spots, expose red flags, and highlight whether your startup is truly worth betting a career on. If you’re hiring soon, you need to be ready—because sharp candidates are.

👉 See the full list of all 13 questions.

❓The VC Questions Every Founder Must Nail

Fundraising isn’t just a pitch—it’s a pressure test. VCs use a familiar set of questions to evaluate whether a founder understands the market, the competition, and the long-term path to scale. But here’s the twist: they’re not just listening to your answers… they’re measuring clarity, conviction, and how well you think under fire.

From market size to team strength, from traction to vision, these questions reveal whether your startup is venture-ready—or still guessing its way forward.

👉 Explore the ultimate guide to answering VC questions with confidence.

🚧 Is Your Startup Funnel Actually a Trap?

Founders spend months chasing complicated funnels, fancy automations, or viral loops—yet the biggest growth unlock often comes from two simple questions: Who are my best customers? And who actually pays the most?

That shift changed everything for doola. Once they realized their highest-value users weren’t DIY bargain hunters but founders who wanted a “Business-in-a-Box,” growth began compounding… fast.

On the flip side, fundraising can fall into similar traps. A breakdown of $13M in missteps shows what founders consistently get wrong before a raise.

👉 Read the full story to learn how to focus, simplify, and fundraise smarter.

🎯 WEB PICKS

🧠 Gemini 3 Just Built an Entire App From One Prompt
Ask it to “explain the Cloudflare outage visually” and it instantly generates a full Outage Visualizer app—complete with search and live data sources.

🚀 Jeff Bezos Is Betting $6.2B on an AI Revolution
Bezos returns to hands-on leadership with Project Prometheus—an AI moonshot set to transform aerospace, computing, and manufacturing.

🛡️ This Defense Startup Just Raised $12M to Build Autonomous War Machines
Bone AI is creating drones, ground vehicles, and marine robots capable of wildfire detection, logistics support, and anti-drone defense.

💥 Your Gadgets Are About to Get More Expensive—Here’s Why
Chipmakers warn of a massive memory shortage as AI servers get priority, with Samsung already hiking prices by up to 60%.

🎵 AI Music Just Took Over Spotify—And It’s Only Getting Started
Three AI-made tracks hit major charts as 50,000 new AI songs flood streaming platforms every single day.

🤖 Your Executives Are Secretly Using ChatGPT Behind IT’s Back
A new survey shows 68% of C-suite leaders bypass enterprise tools because consumer AI is faster, simpler, and more powerful.