What’s the difference between seed and pre-seed?

At Icehouse Ventures we consider the purpose of a pre-seed round to be for product development in order to demonstrate that your solution meets a market need. The size of the raise is usually between $200K - $1M, on a convertible note or at a $3M - $4M valuation. At the stage of a seed round it's expected that the initial core team have already validated their value proposition and are using the funding to prove product-market fit and prepare to scale. The raise is expected to be between $1M - $4M at a $3M -$10M valuation.