Things to know about Beta Boom

From an initial conversation, we aim to reach a clear yes or no within 4–6 weeks. We prioritize transparency, fast feedback, and respecting founders’ time.

Founders building customer-centric products with real-world use cases—especially in enterprise, healthcare, climate, and infrastructure—tend to be a strong fit. We value thoughtful builders over hype-driven growth.

We primarily invest at the pre-seed stage, often as the first institutional check. We also selectively participate in early Seed rounds when there’s strong momentum and alignment.

Yes. Seattle has exceptional technical talent, and we’re comfortable backing highly technical founders as well as non-technical founders with strong customer insight. What matters most is clarity on the problem and why you’re the right person to solve it.

No. While we actively invest in founders building in Seattle and across the Pacific Northwest, we back founders nationwide. If you’re choosing Seattle as the place to build—or already building here—we’d love to hear from you.

From an initial conversation, we aim to reach a clear decision within 4–6 weeks, depending on diligence and scheduling.

Startups solving problems in regulated, enterprise, or mission-driven markets often thrive due to early customer access and domain expertise.

Absolutely. Many of our founders come from policy, healthcare, government, or enterprise backgrounds rather than traditional startup paths.

We primarily invest at the pre-seed stage, often before or at the first institutional round, with selective early Seed participation.

Yes. We actively invest in founders across Washington, DC, Northern Virginia, and Maryland, while also backing exceptional teams nationwide.

From an initial conversation, we aim to provide a clear answer within 4–6 weeks, depending on diligence and scheduling.

DFW offers access to real customers, strong enterprise adoption, capital efficiency, and founders focused on building durable businesses—not hype.

Absolutely. Many of our portfolio companies are led by solo and non‑technical founders. Team structure matters far less to us than insight and execution.

We primarily invest at the pre‑seed stage, often before or at the first institutional round, with selective early Seed investments.

Yes. We actively invest in founders building in DFW and across Texas, while also backing exceptional teams nationwide.

From an initial meeting, we aim to reach a clear yes or no within 4–6 weeks, depending on diligence and scheduling. We work hard to respect founders’ time and avoid dragging out the process.

Clear product differentiation, deep understanding of the customer, and founders who are truly obsessed with the problem they’re solving. Pedigree matters far less to us than clarity, conviction, and execution.

We primarily invest at the pre-seed stage, often writing the first institutional check. We also selectively participate in early Seed rounds when there’s a strong fit.

Yes. Many of our portfolio companies are led by solo founders and founders without technical backgrounds. We care far more about insight, execution, and customer understanding than team stereotypes.

No. While we actively invest in Chicago and love backing founders building in the region, we invest in founders across the U.S. Geography isn’t a barrier—building something compelling is what matters most.

Yes. We actively invest in single founders and non-technical founders.

Many of our portfolio companies are led by:

• Solo founders
  
  
• Founders without technical backgrounds
  
  
• Founders who didn’t attend top-tier universities
  
  

We care far more about execution, insight, and obsession with the problem than pedigree.

Beta Boom invests in U.S.-based startups only, and we do not invest in companies headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We actively invest in founders across:

• Sacramento
  
  
• Southern California
  
  
• The Central Valley
  
  
• And anywhere else in the United States outside Silicon Valley

No. You do not need a referral to get funded by Beta Boom.

All startups enter our pipeline through our intake form, and we intentionally avoid referral bias. In fact, referred companies receive a small internal penalty to ensure fair evaluation.

From an initial meeting, we aim to reach a “yes” or “no” within 4–6 weeks, depending on scheduling and diligence complexity.

We prioritize fast, honest decisions:

• We try to say “no” quickly if we’re not the right fit
  
  
• We work hard to give every founder a clear answer as soon as possible
  
  

We respect founders’ time and avoid dragging out the process.

Yes. While we like to see early signs of traction or revenue, Beta Boom does invest in pre-revenue startups.

At the pre-seed stage, we place significant weight on:

• Founder insight and grit
  
  
• Product differentiation
  
  
• Evidence that users or customers love the product (even if usage is early)
  
  

If you’re unsure, we encourage you to apply.

Yes. Beta Boom is sector-agnostic, and we actively invest in:

• Healthcare & HealthTech
  
  
• Fintech
  
  
• Cybersecurity
  
  
• Enterprise, SaaS, Climate, Consumer, and more
  
  

What matters most to us is clear product differentiation, a strong understanding of the customer, and founders with deep insight into the problem they’re solving.

Our average pre-seed check size is ~$350K, with a typical range of $250K–$500K. For Seed rounds, we may invest slightly more depending on the opportunity.

We focus on writing meaningful early checks that allow founders to build real momentum.

Beta Boom is a pre-seed venture capital firm that primarily invests in pre-seed startups, with occasional participation in smaller Seed rounds. We typically write the first institutional check and are comfortable being the lead or sole investor in a round.

We generally invest in:

• Pre-seed rounds up to ~$2.5M
  
  
• Valuations or caps up to ~$10M at pre-seed
  
  
• Select Seed rounds up to ~$3M

From an initial meeting, our team tries to get to a “yes” within 4-6 weeks, depending on scheduling availability. Sometimes this timeline can get extended due to delays in scheduling meetings or because our small team simply falls behind.

We try to tell founders “no” as soon as we can, so we don’t waste your time if we’re not the right fit.

Most importantly, we try really, really hard to give everyone either a “yes” or a “no” as soon as we can.

No, you don’t need a referral to pitch Beta Boom. Anyone can get on our radar for investment, and we don’t do pitch meetings (see above).

In fact, any startup that comes to us through a referral starts at a disadvantage because we give such startups a penalty to compensate for association bias in our decision-making process.

You can see a quick overview of our investment process here, or review the steps below.

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Step 1: Intake Form

• We ask that all founders fill out our short intake form, which will officially put your company in our pipeline for review.
• Everyone who applies for investment can expect to hear back from our team in less than two weeks.
• If you do not submit your information via our intake form, your company won’t be considered for investment.

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Step 2: Initial Meeting

• We ask a select group of companies to meet with our founders for an hour-long discussion about your business.
• During this time, we like to have a dialog with the founders to dive deeper into areas of their business that are of interest to our investment team.
• Before the meeting, you will be asked to complete a longer questionnaire, so we can get the basic information about your company and focus on more detailed facets of your business.
• Our commitment to you is to respect you and your time by being prepared and asking thoughtful questions.
• We do not do the typical pitch meetings that you might be used to where an investor will show up unprepared, know nothing about your business, and check our email while you talk.
• We usually get back to founders within two weeks of our meeting to let them know that we’d like to learn more or to respectfully pass on investing.

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Step 3: Data Room

• After our initial meeting, we ask some companies to provide a data room, if they have one.
• If companies don’t already have a data room, we might ask for specific documents such as historical financials, capitalization table, IP assignments, etc. If you don’t know what these things mean, don’t worry. We’ll explain.
• It usually takes us about a week to review your data room and get back to you.

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Step 4: Deep-Dive Meetings

• After we review your data room and do additional research on your space, we will often have another two or three conversations to get to know you and your co-founders and to ask further questions about various aspects of your business.
• We will likely dive deeper into your product development, marketing, and sales.

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Step 5: Final Diligence

• If we’re leaning toward an investment at this point, we’ll do our final diligence, which usually involves a more thorough legal review, reference checks, etc.
• Final diligence usually takes about two weeks.

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First, it’s important to know that we evaluate investment opportunities over dozens of dimensions, so there is no magic bullet.

Second, most of the companies that do not make it past our initial review fail to show obvious product differentiation. We recommend spending a lot of time carefully defining how your product is uniquely valuable.

Third, we prioritize getting to know founders who have shown grit, passion for the problem they are solving, and exceptional insight into the lives and needs of their users or customers.

Finally, we get very excited when founders can prove to us that they have built something that users or customers really love, or better yet, can’t live without.

Our average check size for a pre-seed round is usually between $350K and $500K.

For Seed rounds, our investment size would be slightly larger, and we would expect greater product and revenue validation.

Beta Boom is mostly a pre-seed fund, but we do sometimes participate in smaller Seed rounds.

Usually, we won’t participate in pre-seed rounds in excess of $2.5 million or valuations or valuation caps in excess of $10 million.

For Seed rounds, we can go up to $3 million rounds at valuations of up to $15 million.

Yes. We’re happy to be the first check in or the only check into your round.

We’re conviction investors and don’t really care if you have a lead or not.

Once we invest, we make introductions and are happy to share with other investors why we have conviction in you and your company.

If ever in doubt, please apply. It takes only a few minutes, and at least you will be on our radar.

Having said that, we try to be very transparent about our investment criteria, which you can read in full HERE.

We back founders from all walks of life, and many of them are women or BIPOC. However, we don’t have a specific diversity mandate.

Since our beginning in 2017, we have backed tenacious, passionate founders who don’t fit the Silicon Valley stereotype, and that includes folks from all kinds of backgrounds.

Yes! Tons of research suggest that single-founders are more successful than multi-founder teams.

We’re not afraid to back you and have many companies led by single founders in our portfolio.

Yes! Some of the most successful founders like Melanie Perkins and Tope Awotona were non-technical.

We’re not scared to back founders like you, so long as you are passionate about the problem that you’re solving and know your customer better than anyone else on this planet.

We do invest in founders that went to Ivy League universities, Stanford, MIT, and other top schools, but the majority of founders have not graduated from these top-tier universities.

We value founders’ passion, tenacity, and execution much more than their diploma.

We do not invest in startups headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

There are tons of funds that love to invest in Silicon Valley startups, but that’s not what we look for.

We do invest in startups based in Sacramento, the Central Valley, SoCal and anywhere else in the United States.

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We do not invest in startups headquartered outside the United States at this time.

We more often invest in companies with some revenue and revenue growth, but we do sometimes invest in companies without any revenue or user traction.

There are many factors that influence our investment decisions, and while traction is important, we also put a lot of emphasis on the founders’ backgrounds, their passion for the problem, the level of insight into their consumers, the market, etc.

If in doubt, apply. You can always re-apply, and we like to keep track of startups to see how they grow.