> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.metal.so/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Market Signals
> Surface investors who are publicly expressing conviction in and around your space.
Every day, investors are "talking" about what types of founders or business models they want to fund. This is spread out across millions of data points in the form of podcasts, blog posts, social media posts, and more. With Market Signals, the platform algorithmically scans 1m+ data points of content across the web, and surfaces investors that are particularly inclined toward the founder's business model.
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## Setting Up the Signal Feed
Before Market Signals can surface high-quality matches, spend five minutes on calibration. This is the most important setup step — a generic signal feed produces noise; a calibrated one produces leads.
Go to **Settings → Company Profile** and complete your company description, sector tags, and stage. Market Signals uses this as the baseline to score investor content relevance against your specific positioning.
Navigate to **Settings → Market Signals → Calibration**. Set the specific thesis keywords that define your company's investment story — not just your sector category, but your specific positioning within it. *Example: "vertical SaaS for independent freight brokers" rather than just "logistics software."*
In **Parameters**, control which content types Metal surfaces — web data, podcast mentions, published articles, or social posts — and how they're weighted. Start with all four enabled; refine based on which produce the most actionable signals for your specific investor targets.
In **Sources**, specify which content domains Metal includes. Enable specific RSS feeds or content categories based on where your target investors actually publish. If your investors cluster around a few key publications, adding those sources directly improves signal quality.
A well-calibrated signal feed — with specific thesis keywords and positioning language — produces meaningfully higher signal quality than running on defaults. Invest in this setup before you start working the feed.
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## How It Works
Metal continuously monitors public content from thousands of investors — podcasts, Substack posts, LinkedIn articles, conference talks, and interviews. Each piece of content is analysed for investment thesis signals, which are then scored against your company profile for relevance.
The result is a personalised signal feed: investors who are currently thinking and writing about spaces directly relevant to your raise, ranked by how closely their expressed conviction aligns with what you're building.
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## The Signal Feed
Navigate to **Discovery → Market Intelligence** to access your signal feed. Each signal card shows:
| **Signal field** | **What it shows** |
| :--------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Signal Commentary** | How clearly the investor expressed conviction |
| **Overlapping Themes** | What themes overlap with your business model and company thesis |
| **Partners** | Partners who have spoken or written about investment focus areas |
| **Source** | The original content item — podcast, blog post, article, or interview. Click **View Source** to read or listen before acting |
| **A Summary** | Click **Summarise** for a one-paragraph digest of what the investor said, why it's relevant to your company, and what it suggests about their current conviction level |
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## Filtering the Signal Feed
You can filter the feed to focus on the signals most relevant to your current targeting:
| Filter | What it does |
| :----------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Investor type** | Limit to VCs, angels, corporates, or accelerators |
| **Investor Focus** | Filter investors by their investment activity, geo, stage or sector focus |
| **Stage** | Surface only signals from investors who express conviction at your round stage |
| **Recency** | Signals from the last 30, 60, or 90 days |
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## Why Market Signals Matter
Investors who are publicly articulating thesis in your space are actively forming conviction, easier to reference in outreach, and more likely to respond than investors targeted purely on historical portfolio data.
> *"I came across your recent piece on \[publication] about \[thesis area] — it maps closely to what we're building at \[company]. I'd love 20 minutes."*
A one-line reference to a specific thing they've said publicly is one of the most effective cold outreach openers available. Market Signals gives you the raw material for that.
Don't treat every signal as an outreach trigger. A passing mention of your sector in a 45-minute podcast is a weak signal. An investor who publishes a 2,000-word thesis piece on your exact sub-sector is a strong one. Prioritise signals that show depth, precision, and recent interest — not just surface-level relevance.
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## Acting on Signals
For each signal, you have two actions:
* **Add to Pipeline** — Sdds the investor to your pipeline with the signal logged as the sourcing reason. The content source is saved alongside the investor record for reference when drafting outreach.
* **Pass** — Dismisses the signal without adding to your pipeline. Metal learns from passes and refines the relevance of future signals shown to you.
Save the source URL when you add an investor from a signal. Reference it specifically in your intro request — naming the article or podcast episode shows you actually engaged with what they said.
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## Market Signals vs. AI Search
Market Signals and AI Search are complementary, not competitive.
AI Search finds investors based on **historical investing patterns**. Market Signals finds investors based on **current expressed conviction,** specifically surfacing investors that are thinking and writing about your space right now.
The strongest targets are investors who appear in both: historical portfolio fit *and* recent public thesis expression. Those investors have pre-formed views on your category, are actively thinking about it, and have a track record of backing it with capital.
Use Market Signals alongside [AI Search](https://docs.metal.so/Product-Docs-v2/Identifying%20Investors/ai-search), [New Funds](https://docs.metal.so/Product-Docs-v2/Identifying%20Investors/new-funds), and [Similar Companies](https://docs.metal.so/Product-Docs-v2/Identifying%20Investors/similar-companies) to build a multi-signal investor list that zooms in on the "most likely" investors.
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