The Clock Starts After a Pre-Revenue Round
What must happen after a pre-revenue raise for the investment to pay off, and what founders and investors should focus on in the first 90 days.
By Sharon Bushy, MBA, Founder of Business Building Blocks
Introduction
In September 2026, two beauty brands raised a combined $10 million before selling a single product. For founders, this is encouraging news: investors remain willing to back consumer brands early, even before revenue. For investors, it is a calculated bet. And for everyone involved, it marks the start of a demanding period.
A pre-revenue round does not prove that a business works. It funds the attempt to prove it. The capital buys time, and the quality of the go-to-market plan determines what that time is worth.
This article examines the two September rounds, explains the logic behind them, and sets out what I believe must happen in the months that follow. It is written for founders who have raised or plan to raise early capital, and for the investors who support them.
Two rounds, one pattern
BetterDays
BetterDays is a Los Angeles-based men's grooming brand focused on texture-inclusive haircare for wavy, curly and coily hair. In late September, it announced $7 million in pre-revenue funding from Maveron and Will Ventures.
The brand was co-founded by Victor Fontanez, the barber known as VicBlends, and Joey Thomas, co-founder of DUDE Wipes. Its first products, Rebound Cream and Grip Powder, are each priced at $20 and sold direct-to-consumer, on TikTok Shop and on Amazon.
The most notable asset is distribution. VicBlends has a social following of more than 23 million across platforms, and a client list that has included Barack Obama and Tom Brady.
LeNose
LeNose launched the same month with $3 million in pre-revenue funding, in a round described as oversubscribed. The investors were Era, Fifth Growth Fund and OpenSky Ventures.
The brand was founded by Caroline Valentini, Lindsay St. Clair and Zee Carlstrom, all alumni of Bubble, the Gen Z skincare brand. Its first product is a fragranced hand wash positioned as "a $100 hand wash for $10," launched direct-to-consumer and on TikTok Shop, with Amazon planned for October. Industry sources estimated first-year retail sales of $5 million to $10 million.
Here, the core asset is operating experience. The founders have already built and scaled a consumer beauty brand.
The common thread
Neither company had sales to show. Both had something investors often value more at this stage: a credible route to customers. In one case, that route is an audience. In the other, it is a team that has done this before.
Why investors fund distribution before product
In consumer products, a good formula is necessary but rarely sufficient. Many well-made beauty and wellness products fail because they never reach enough customers at a sustainable cost. The product is the easier part to copy. The path to the customer is much harder to build.
This is why distribution has become the central question in early-stage consumer investing. When an investor backs a brand before revenue, they are usually betting on three things:
Lower customer acquisition cost. A founder with a large, engaged audience can reach potential customers without paying for every impression.
Faster learning. A brand with built-in reach can test products, messages and prices quickly and read the response in days rather than months.
Execution experience. A team that has launched and scaled before is less likely to repeat the costly mistakes of a first-time team.
BetterDays brings the first two. LeNose brings the third. On those terms, both rounds are rational bets.
Audience is an option, not an outcome
The risk lies in treating an audience, or a strong résumé, as if it were proof of demand. It is not. An audience is an option on future sales. It still has to be converted.
That conversion happens in three stages, and each one is a place where value can leak:
From follower to first buyer. People who admire a founder do not automatically buy that founder's product. The offer, the price, the message and the moment all have to be right.
From first buyer to repeat buyer. A first purchase shows curiosity. A second purchase shows that the product delivered on its promise. This is the stage where most consumer brands are made or broken.
From repeat buyer to advocate. The strongest brands reach a point where customers recommend them unprompted, and new customers arrive through word of mouth rather than the founder's feed.
A pre-revenue round is effectively a bet that the brand can move people through all three stages before the capital runs out. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the question is no longer whether the brand can get attention. It is whether attention turns into a durable business.
This is also why celebrity and creator-led brands carry a particular risk. In September 2026 alone, Kate Hudson's supplement brand InBloom shut down after six years, and Camila Coelho's beauty brand Elaluz paused operations. Fame can produce a strong launch. It cannot, on its own, produce a second order.
The first 90 days: three priorities
The weeks immediately after a round are when habits form. Teams hire, agencies are briefed, budgets are allocated and launch plans are locked. Decisions made in this window tend to persist for the rest of the funding cycle, so they deserve particular care.
If I were advising a brand in the first 90 days after a pre-revenue round, I would focus on three priorities.
Priority 1: One hero product with one clear message
New brands are often tempted to launch a full range. More products seem to offer more chances to succeed. In practice, a broad launch divides attention, inventory and marketing budget, and it gives customers too many decisions at the moment they are least familiar with the brand.
A single hero product does the opposite. It gives the audience one clear thing to buy and gives the team one message to repeat until it sticks. It also makes the early data easier to read. When there is one product, it is clear what customers are responding to.
In practice, this means:
Choosing the hero deliberately. It should be the product that best represents the brand's promise and has the strongest potential for repeat purchase.
Writing one sentence that explains it. A stranger should understand what it is, who it is for and why it is different in a few seconds, on a shelf or in a feed.
Holding back the rest of the range. Additional products can follow once customers ask for them. Those requests are valuable, inexpensive market research.
Priority 2: An audience the brand owns
A large social following is powerful, but it is rented. Platforms change their algorithms, reach rises and falls, and the brand has little control over who sees what. A brand built entirely on social reach depends on terms it does not set.
The second priority, therefore, is to convert borrowed attention into owned relationships, chiefly through email and SMS lists. An owned list lets the brand reach customers directly at the moments that matter most: the launch, the restock and the reorder.
In practice, this means:
Opening a waitlist or early-access list before launch, with a clear reason to join, such as first access or a founding-customer offer.
Making list growth a stated goal of every piece of social content, not an afterthought.
Planning the first post-purchase emails before launch. These include how to use the product, what to expect and when to reorder. They set up the second purchase.
Priority 3: A shared weekly scorecard
The third priority is a single scorecard that founders and investors review together every week. Its purpose is to measure the conversion stages described above, not just attention. Views, likes and follower counts are easy to report and easy to misread. They show reach, not business health.
A practical scorecard for a newly funded consumer brand might track the following:
Stage | What to measure | Why it matters |
Attention | Reach and engaged views by channel | Shows which channels earn attention |
Capture | New email and SMS subscribers | Measures how much rented attention becomes owned |
First purchase | Conversion rate from visit to order; customer acquisition cost by channel | Shows whether attention turns into sales, and at what cost |
Unit economics | Gross margin and contribution margin per order after shipping, fulfillment and discounts | Confirms whether each sale creates value |
Repeat purchase | Share of customers who buy again, and how soon | The clearest early signal of product-market fit |
Advocacy | Review volume and content; share of new customers from referral or word of mouth | Shows whether growth can continue beyond the founder's audience |
The exact targets will vary by category, price point and channel. What matters most in the first 90 days is that the measures exist, that everyone looks at the same numbers, and that the team can explain what is driving them. A shared scorecard also strengthens the relationship between founders and investors. It replaces anecdote with evidence and makes board conversations more productive.
Months 4 to 18: from launch to proof
Once the launch is behind the brand, the work changes. The first 90 days are about setting the foundations and reading the first signals. The following year is about turning those signals into evidence that the business can grow beyond its starting audience, which is what the next round of investors will want to see.
Prove that customers come back
Repeat purchase is the most important number in this period. It is the clearest early evidence that the product delivers on its promise and that the brand can grow without paying to reacquire every sale.
Brands can support repeat purchase deliberately:
Time reminders to how the product is actually used. If a product typically lasts six weeks, the reorder prompt should arrive shortly before it runs out, not at an arbitrary interval.
Teach customers how to get results. In beauty and wellness, many products work best with consistent use. Clear guidance in the first weeks improves both results and retention.
Reward loyalty without training customers to wait for discounts. Early access, exclusive products or useful add-ons tend to protect the brand better than repeated price cuts.
Expand channels in sequence, not all at once
Both BetterDays and LeNose launched across several online channels from the start, including direct-to-consumer and TikTok Shop, with Amazon either live or planned. Multi-channel launches can work well, but each channel has its own economics, customer behavior and operating demands.
A disciplined approach is to add channels in sequence, with clear criteria for each step. For example, a brand might expand only when the existing channel shows healthy repeat purchase and positive contribution margin. Retail is the most demanding step of all. It brings retailer margins, promotional costs and inventory commitments, and success depends on sell-through, not just shelf placement.
Reduce dependence on the founder
In audience-led brands, much of the early demand comes from the founder's personal reach. That is an advantage at launch and a risk over time. If every sales spike traces back to a founder post, the business has not yet proven it can grow on its own.
Over this period, healthy brands gradually build other sources of demand: creator partnerships, customer referrals, search, retail discovery and an owned list that compounds over time. They also document their go-to-market processes, so that the brand's growth does not depend on any single person's calendar or energy.
Common failure modes
In my experience, well-funded consumer brands rarely fail because of one dramatic mistake. More often, a series of reasonable decisions adds up to a business that cannot sustain itself. The most common patterns include:
Mistaking launch-week sales for demand. A strong launch driven by an audience can hide weak repeat purchase for several months.
Expanding the range too early. New products are added before the hero product has proven itself, which spreads budget and attention thin.
Spending to fill gaps in organic demand. When founder-driven sales slow, paid media is used to maintain growth, often at a cost the unit economics cannot support.
Measuring attention instead of conversion. Reports focus on views and followers rather than buyers, repeat buyers and margin.
Entering retail before the brand is ready. Retail is pursued as a milestone rather than a channel, without a sell-through plan or the margin to support it.
Keeping the go-to-market plan in the founder's head. Without documented strategy and processes, the team cannot execute independently, and investors cannot see what is working.
None of these is inevitable. Each can be avoided with a clear plan, the right measures and regular, honest review.
What investors should watch
Investors who back pre-revenue consumer brands take on a specific kind of risk: the gap between attention and a durable business. The board's role in the first year is not to manage the brand day to day, but to make sure that gap is closing, and closing at a cost the business can sustain.
In the first 90 days, I would encourage investors to ask five questions at every review:
What is the hero product, and how is the message performing? The answer should be specific and backed by early conversion data.
How much of the audience has become owned? Growth in the email and SMS list is a leading indicator of the brand's long-term independence from any single platform.
What does each order actually earn? Contribution margin after shipping, fulfillment and discounts matters more than top-line revenue at this stage.
Are customers coming back? Even early repeat-purchase data, read carefully, says a great deal about product-market fit.
What share of demand comes from beyond the founder? A rising share of sales from referrals, creators, search or retail suggests the brand is building its own momentum.
These questions are not a substitute for an investor's own diligence framework. They are a practical way to keep the conversation focused on conversion rather than reach, and to spot problems while there is still time and capital to correct them.
Investors can also help in a more direct way: by connecting founders with experienced operators early. Many first-time founders know their customer and their product deeply but have never built a full go-to-market system. Support in the first 90 days, when foundations are being set, often costs far less than corrective work a year later.
Lessons for founders without an audience
Most founders will never have 23 million followers or a team that has already scaled a beauty brand. That does not put them outside the conversation. The September rounds show what investors are really looking for: a credible route to customers. A large audience is one form of that route, but it is not the only one.
For founders without a built-in audience, credible proof can take several forms:
A retail commitment. A purchase order from a respected retailer is outside validation. In September 2026, for example, period care brand Viv raised $2 million as it expanded to all 526 Whole Foods Market locations.
An engaged owned list. A waitlist or customer list that opens, clicks and buys is evidence of real interest that the founder controls.
Repeat customers. A modest number of customers who reorder without a discount can be more persuasive than a large number of one-time buyers.
A selective accelerator. Programs such as Ulta Beauty's MUSE Accelerator and Sephora Accelerate offer mentorship, credibility and a clearer path to retail for early-stage brands.
The principle is the same for every founder: build evidence that customers want the product and will come back for it, then raise to scale what is already working.
Conclusion: the money buys time
Pre-revenue rounds like those raised by BetterDays and LeNose reflect a clear and reasonable investment thesis: in consumer products, distribution and experience are scarce, and early capital can turn them into a lasting brand. But the thesis only pays off if the next 12 to 18 months convert attention into customers, and customers into repeat buyers.
The priorities are simple to state and demanding to execute. Focus on one hero product. Turn borrowed attention into an owned audience. Measure what matters, every week, together. And build a go-to-market system that does not depend on a single person.
The money buys time. The go-to-market plan decides what that time is worth.
About Business Building Blocks
Business Building Blocks is a Los Angeles-based growth strategy consultancy for founder-led beauty, wellness and consumer product brands. We help founders and their investors build go-to-market systems in the critical months before and after a raise, from positioning and launch planning to the measures that show what is working.
If you are a founder preparing to launch, or an investor supporting an early-stage consumer brand, I am happy to share the 90-day scorecard template referenced in this article. Contact Sharon to request a copy or to arrange a conversation.
This article reflects publicly reported information as of October 2026 and the author's professional opinion. It is not investment advice.
Sources
BeautyMatter: BetterDays launches with $7 million in funding (September 29, 2026)
VCBacked: Beauty seed startups (BetterDays location)
BeautyMatter: LeNose launches with $3 million in pre-revenue funding (September 23, 2026)
Beauty Independent: Indie Beauty Dish (September 17, 2026: InBloom, Elaluz)
FemTech Insider: Viv secures $2M (September 9, 2026)
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