What goes wrong after a CEE pre-seed round?
Finding customers, by a wide margin. Sales and go-to-market came up as a problem in 86% of calls between BADideas and the founders it backs, more than any other area. Product followed in about half of calls, then raising the next round.
The figures
| Problem areas founders raised after raising | Share of calls |
|---|---|
| Sales and finding customers | 86% |
| Product | 50% |
| Raising the next round | 45% |
| Hiring | 32% |
| Cash and runway | 29% |
| The founder's own role and time | 25% |
| Co-founders and the core team | 19% |
| Pricing | 19% |
| Investors and the board | 18% |
| Legal and admin | 17% |
| Founder wellbeing | 11% |
In BADideas founder calls, the problems move with time: in the first six months it is customers and product; after a year, hiring and the next round take over.
| Months after the round | Sales and finding customers | Product | Raising the next round | Hiring | Cash and runway | The founder's own role and time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In the first six months | 92% | 55% | 33% | 26% | 21% | 22% |
| 6 to 12 months | 88% | 56% | 44% | 12% | 34% | 34% |
| 12 to 24 months | 91% | 56% | 62% | 59% | 35% | 29% |
| After two years | 61% | 23% | 71% | 42% | 42% | 23% |
Raising the next round comes up in 33% of calls in the first six months and in 71% after two years; hiring peaks at 12 to 24 months (59%).
What it means for you
- Plan for sales to be the hard part. Product problems get solved; finding a repeatable way to win customers is what founders still struggle with a year in.
- Pick two or three things. The most common advice to founders in these calls is to stop doing many things at once and put most of the time on the few levers that move growth.
- Start thinking about the next round early. It becomes the main topic after the first year; the milestones it needs are set in the first months.
- Hire slowly. Work out the repeatable process yourself before hiring someone to run it.
Related questions
Is it normal for the founder's role to change after raising?
Yes. In 18% of calls after the investment the founder's own role was changing: handing off operations, stepping into sales, or moving time to the one thing that makes or breaks the company. A useful check is the share of the founder's own hours that goes directly to the two or three things that matter.
What do founders worry about most after raising pre-seed?
Sales and customers first, then the product, then the next round. Founder wellbeing came up in 11% of calls.
How we measured it
- Source: applications founders sent to BADideas, plus public information where we found it.
- Limits: only early-stage companies that applied to a single fund.
- On this page: A problem area counts once per call when the founder raises a problem in it. Companies one fund invested in; months are counted from the fund's investment.
- Updated: 13 October 2026.
BADideas.fund, "What goes wrong after a CEE pre-seed round?", updated 13 October 2026. https://badideas.fund/answers/problems-after-raising-cee
Read next
- What help do pre-seed VCs give CEE founders?
- What do early CEE startups charge per month?
- How much runway should a CEE pre-seed buy?
- Do CEE startups price in euros or dollars?
Who we are
We are a pre-seed and seed fund for founders in Central and Eastern Europe. We have built and sold companies ourselves, and since 2022 we have backed more than 40.
We back founders who see something about their market that others do not see yet. They want to change how a whole industry works, and they start small.
Good founders rarely fail on the idea or the product. They fail on selling it. We give your company hands-on help from go-to-market operators who grew Zendesk, Square and Scale AI.