20 Ways to Show Revenue Potential Without Any

How leading indicators can help you validate market appetite and raise capital

I’ve had the pleasure of working with almost 100 pre-seed startups through my work at Collective Campus and Metarise over the past six years.

Most of them are focused on two questions.

How can I validate my idea before building it?

How can I raise capital if I don’t have any income?

In both cases, leading indicators can be of great help.

Leading indicators, as opposed to lagging indicators, are pieces of data that suggest future behavior.

In the case of early-stage startups, there are numerous leading indicators that suggest future revenue.

While by no means conclusive, the use of the following indicators can help to give both founders and investors more certainty and confidence in a startup’s value proposition and its potential to make money.

1. Whitelist sign-ups

The use of a whitelist, or waitlist, simply pitches your product’s value proposition in very simple terms, and asks visitors to sign up to the waitlist to be the first to know when it goes live.