The pre-founder days: what is the ideation stage?

Latitud & The Era of Pre-Founders

Latitud is a pre-seed VC firm that was born out of a community. The Latitud Fellowship is our flagship program and, believe it or not, it’s been four years since we kicked off the first cohort (we know, time flies when you’re building the future).

We’ve mentored fellows who’ve gone on to raise over $1B from top investors. And that experience prepared us for the next level: our new iteration of the fellowship, with applications open until Feb 17th at noon btw, isn’t for everyone.

Aside from an AI focus (non-negotiable for this cohort), we’re being extra picky about the type of founder and startup we back.

The Latitud Fellowship is now laser-focused on supporting pre-founders — those still in the deliciously chaotic ideation stage. So let’s dive into what makes a pre-founder and what defines the ideation stage.

Pre-Founders Meet Ideation

These two concepts go hand in hand: pre-founders aren’t “official” founders (yet!) because they’re still ideating.

I know, shocking.
But wtf is even “ideating”?

Now that’s a good one. You know that moment when someone grabs whatever’s nearby — a napkin, their hand, a stranger’s driver’s license OOPS SRY — to scribble down an idea before it disappears?

That’s peak ideation stage.
It’s not even day 0. It’s day -1.

At this stage, you don’t have a startup yet. You have sparks, hunches, an unsettling feeling that something big is missing in the world. You might be:

• Testing different problem statements
• Exploring solutions already but not yet locked in a specific one
• Building prototypes and talking to potential customers
• Searching for a co-founder who adds to your genius

You’re still piecing together the puzzle (and honestly, half the pieces are missing). But if you obsess over the right problem, one day it’ll click. And when it does… Scaling will feel like you entered a cheat code for rapid growth.

‍How To Find Ideas?

‍The best founders don’t wait for inspiration to strike: they’ve been training for this moment since birth.

By that, we mean that the opportunities you notice are (99% of the time) a direct result of your past experiences, a.k.a. the problems you’ve encountered firsthand and then turned into domain knowledge.

The best ideas don’t just pop into your head like a cartoon lightbulb — they emerge from the clash of domains, as Paul Graham puts it. Or they smack you in the face when you’re deep in the weeds of a problem space, as we put it.

If you’re deeply immersed in an industry, a niche, or even a weird hobby, you start seeing gaps that others don’t. The deeper you go into the rabbit hole of your domain, the sharper your questions become – the kind that only a handful of people in the world even know how to ask.

Here’s the kicker: at this level of depth, even when you’re not actively thinking about it, your brain keeps connecting the dots in the background. The more time you spend wrestling with a problem, the more obvious (to you) the best ideas become.

‍Why The Ideation Stage Is So Important

‍Most VCs only want to chat once you have traction. But these chaotic early days are the actual make-or-break moment, when you're making bets that will define your company. The wrong problem, a bad idea, or an unscalable model can kill a company before it even starts. No pressure.

The ideation phase is a rapid-fire game of hypothesis testing: you’re talking to hundreds of people and then validating (or ruthlessly discarding) ideas. It’s time for scrappy, borderline embarrassing MVPs that aren't even real MVPs — just glorified duct-taped tests to see if anyone will bite. Speed > perfection.

‍Let’s be real: if you're not testing your ideas today, it’s not because you lack resources. AI whips up code, Framer builds landing pages in minutes, and no-code tools let you throw together a prototype overnight. There’s no excuse. If you’re not testing, you’re probably not obsessed enough.

‍This phase isn’t about having the answers. It’s about being excited about the questions. That’s what leads to breakthroughs.

So if you hit on something real, don’t overthink it — move because timing is everything (and Latitud can have your back even at this stage).

‍From Ideation To Execution: The Transition

‍You’ve probably realized by now that ideation is an active process — living, thinking, testing, refining, validating.

But how do you know when you’ve crossed the line from pre-founder to founder, from ideation to true execution, aside from an incorporated Delaware LLC? Here’s how we think about it:

If You’re a Pre-Founder…

‍Go you! You’re in the best part. The messy, wild, thrilling part.

With the Latitud Fellowship, we here to help you find your critical puzzle pieces. Some highlights of our ideation-stage program include:

• Your first believer, in the form of a $25K ideation check
• A week-long trip to San Francisco to meet game-changing founders, operators, and investors in the Valley. Because honestly, what better place to build a tech company than the temple of technology itself?

Ideation Isn’t Just A Phase — It’s The Foundation

‍Startups don’t magically appear. They are built piece by piece, with obsessive dedication to a problem leading to picking up the details that will actually matter when finishing the puzzle.

And so, the ideation stage isn’t a waiting room — it’s where real work starts, made of drive and speed to question and test. If you’re in that phase now: you’re exactly where you need to be.