Ask a Seed VC: When is a startup ‘too early’ for funding?

Welcome back to Ask a Seed VC, Eniac’s advice column on startup fundraising and investing. Today we’re answering a question from Electra Coustoftides, co-founder and CEO of Xworks:

While boostrapping and investing in ourselves over the last year+, we have also been applying to early stage, angels, VC’s, accelerators etc. who all say they are interested in investing in early stage companies however most of always the feedback returns as “too early for us.” (We also understand this could either literally mean too early or code for we are not interested.) However, our questions are the following:

• At what point would an early stage company get invested in?
• What does an early stage company need to do in order to be investable? (that is beyond product market fit/traction)