Gaurav Jain wrote the playbook for pre-seed investing. A decade later, he's running one of the industry's most prolific early-stage funds.

For Gaurav Jain, there's nary specified happening arsenic "too early" erstwhile it comes to making a VC investment.

During the past decade, he's built a estimation arsenic 1 of the astir influential early-stage investors successful task capital: archetypal astatine Founder Collective, and, since 2016, astatine Afore Capital, the money helium cofounded to marque pre-seed investments astatine a clip wherever rounds of astatine that size and dollar magnitude had a antagonistic connotation successful the industry.

Since then, Afore has grown into 1 of the astir progressive early-stage funds and has backed companies specified arsenic Modern Health, Neo, and Hightouch.

Jain said he's ever been obsessed with uncovering the close founders who had large ideas but weren't acold capable on to rise a effect round. That thesis yet became Afore Capital, helium said.

Jain ranked No. 2 connected Business Insider's Seed 100 list for 2025, which was compiled utilizing information from Termina.

"A batch of founders were telling america that we were excessively early, but you request wealth to get traction, and you request traction to get money," Jain told Business Insider. "That became the genesis for america to commencement Afore Capital."

A vocation astatine the aboriginal stage

Jain, who was calved successful India, started his vocation astatine Google successful 2009. He was 1 of the earliest merchandise managers astatine the company's Android part erstwhile the mobile level had less than 1 cardinal users. While helium was there, helium led the Android Nexus merchandise line, a scope of phones and tablets that aboriginal became Google Pixel.

Jain near Google successful 2011 to be Harvard Business School, with the extremity of moving into the satellite of task capital. He started moving with Founder Collective, a seed-stage money based successful Boston, and joined the steadfast arsenic main erstwhile helium graduated with his MBA successful 2013. While astatine Founder Collective, Jain was straight progressive successful the firm's investments successful Cruise, Socure, Firebase, Airtable, and Smyte.

At the aforesaid time, Jain said helium was gathering with plentifulness of founders who seemed similar they'd beryllium large bets but weren't yet astatine the size oregon standard to rise a effect backing round. At the time, pre-seed rounds weren't arsenic common, and they sometimes carried a antagonistic cognition with investors due to the fact that they were truthful risky.

Jain, however, saw an accidental successful the market.

"There was this spread successful the market, wherever each of these first-time founders had nary personage and nary meaningful traction," helium said. "I saw the occupation firsthand, which is however we decided to make a money dedicated to fixing it."

Creating a marketplace for pre-seed investing

In 2016, Jain teamed up with Anamitra Banerji, a spouse astatine Foundation Capital who'd been Twitter's 25th worker and the company's archetypal merchandise manager.

The 2 cofounded Afore Capital, a money specifically dedicated to investing successful pre-seed startups. Afore presently has astir $500 cardinal successful assets nether management, and it closed its astir caller fund, a $185 cardinal Fund IV, successful February. The steadfast writes checks of up to $2 million.

Afore's portfolio includes Modern Health, a intelligence wellness benefits level for employers that raised a $74 cardinal Series D successful 2021 and achieved unicorn presumption with a $1.17 cardinal valuation; the Canadian fintech Neo, which raised a 259 cardinal successful Canadian dollars Series D astatine the extremity of 2024; and the AI selling level Hightouch, which successful Februrary raised $80 cardinal astatine a $1.2 cardinal valuation.

The firm's caller exits see Highlight, a web-monitoring app for developers that was acquired by the bundle improvement level LaunchDarkly successful April, and the AI supply-chain startup Factor, which was acquired by the supply-chain logistics level Cofactr successful March.

While Afore is technically a generalist steadfast — erstwhile it comes to backing pre-seed startups, Jain said it doesn't person the luxury of gathering retired an evolved thesis connected a circumstantial marketplace oregon assemblage — it tends to gravitate toward bundle investments, which, today, means making a batch of AI bets. Jain added that it's overmuch much important to place beardown founders, whose ideas mightiness alteration 5 times earlier achieving product-market fit.

"At the signifier wherever we put in, which is pre-traction and pre-revenue, what we are truly investing successful is the people," Jain said, adding that helium looks for founders with a beardown maturation mindset who tin iterate caller ideas rapidly and instrumentality setbacks successful stride.

To that end, Afore has a programme to enactment "pre-idea" founders portion they hunt for the close spark to physique a startup. If the thought hits, the steadfast volition yet put astatine minimum $100,00 oregon pb its pre-seed backing round. There's besides a assemblage mentation of the program, successful which students tin iterate connected a startup thought with Afore enactment alternatively of completing a accepted summertime internship.

"At the pre-seed stage, it's important to springiness founders a harmless abstraction if things aren't working," Jain said. "We're backing you, not 1 rigid idea. We put the clip it takes to get to product-market fit, and our committedness is that we'll beryllium the astir active, hands-on investors you'll ever have."