I have invested in 2 pre-launch companies in the past 6 months and evaluated more than 100 companies raising funds pre-launch in the past 3 months.

In today's world, the minimum bar you should set is a $1,000,000 pre-money valuation. The reason being is that if you accept money for less than that, given today's surplus of early-stage funding, it's a negative signal to future investors.

Today's ceiling for a sophisticated investor valuing a pre-launch startup is $5m and that's with exceptional founders or great founding teams.

So now you have a range by which to navigate within. Further context that will be helpful to you is for you to determine how much you really need to raise to demonstrate traction. It will be much harder for you to raise further funding if you have launched but failed to get substantial validation from your users. So you want to ensure that you can execute the plan you think will work, and ideally have additional funding for some contingency plans. In total, you should never give up more than 1/3 of the company in a pre Series A funding round. Doing so will mess up your cap table later on, and significantly reduce incentives for you and your team. So then, you get a much easier calculation.

Generally, good investors are fairly insensitive to a valuation under $3m.

Happy to talk to you about your funding plans.