Alex McIsaac here from Northside Ventures!

A question I hear from founders all the time:
“A VC reached out to catch up. We’re not raising. Should I take the meeting?”

Some investors will advise founders to avoid VC conversations entirely unless you’re actively raising. However, the answer is more nuanced and largely dependent on what stage you’re at. In my view, for pre-seed and seed stage founders, there are really three different scenarios — and the right approach is different for each.

Scenario 1: Discovery Stage of Exploring & Iterating

This is the early exploration phase. You’re still pre-product-market fit, but you’re making forward progress:

• Talking to customers
• Testing hypotheses
• Iterating on product
• Refining your vision

In this phase, talking to investors can actually be quite helpful — not for fundraising, but for feedback and relationship-building. Don’t let it take all your time or distract from your core focus, but ~one 30 minute meeting a week (3–4 a month) can be productive and net value-add. Thoughtful investors can act as sounding boards, help pressure-test your thinking, offer market perspective, and in some cases, make early design partner or customer intros that accelerate your learning and traction.

At Northside, we work with founders through the ideation stage all the time. These early conversations help us get to know founders and understand how they’re thinking through problems, product, and opportunity, but also help founders get to know us and evaluate if we’re the kind of partner they want to work with when the time comes.

Scenario 2: Early Stage but Resetting & Course-Correcting

This is when things aren’t working as well as you hoped:

• You’re pivoting
• You’re rebuilding the team
• You’ve lost early traction or are resetting the business

During this phase, your priority should be course-correcting. The last thing you need is to spend valuable time giving partial or uncertain updates to new investors. The narrative isn’t fully formed, and early VC conversations here typically don’t move the ball forward. Instead, focus your energy on diagnosing the business, getting back to first principles, and leaning on your existing investors and advisors for support.

Scenario 3: Investor Dating while Gaining Traction

You’ve found early product-market fit:

• Users are increasingly engaging
• You’re seeing some growth and traction
• The vision is clear, but you’re not actively raising because you’re focused on execution

In this case, I recommend a light, intentional cadence of VC conversations — not because you’re fundraising, but to build relationships ahead of future rounds. This is the investor dating phase.

My tactical advise is to allocate ~1 hour per week to 1–2 targeted VC conversations (30 mins each). Create a one slide list of 3–5 bullet points you can use for each meeting so you don’t have to spend time prepping for each meeting. I advise focusing the bullets on:

• What you’re building
• Who are you building for (your ICP)
• Where traction is emerging
• The ambitious vision you’re executing against
• And one or two clear asks of the investor (customer intros, market insights, etc.)

This sets you up for a more efficient fundraise down the line — when you’re ready, you’ll already have a group of VCs who’ve been tracking your progress and are up to speed. You’ll know who is a fit and who isn’t, before you go out to raise. If executed well the 1 hour a week leading up to the raise will enable a faster more efficient process and ultimately let you get back to building much faster.

The Bottom Line

It’s less about whether you should take the meeting, and more about why you’re taking it. If you’re intentional about which conversations you have and when you have them, VC meetings can be useful — but only if they serve the phase you’re in.