Hernan and Rahul both make good points. The reality of it is that you will need a functional prototype for anyone to be interested in investing beyond friends and family.

The angel investors and early-stage seed funds that invest in pre-launch products are heavily (and understandably) product-focused. If you build a magical product experience, and you get in the right hands, you can and *should* raise pre-launch.

My advice to all mobile app companies is to always launch first OUTSIDE of the US app store. Investors will look for data as to when your app became available and if you're not trending towards 100,000 downloads in your first month, seed funds will almost always come back to you with "we'd like to see more traction" which means you have to be trending towards 1,000,000 installs with relevant engagement metrics to your app to get their attention again.

As a mobile-first entrepreneur who has raised capital, I'm happy to talk to you further about this.