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Favourable Predisposition to Company’s Thesis

Of 4,000+ active venture investors, ones that are most likely to invest in a given Company are those that have a predisposition in favour of the Company’s thesis. To identify investors that have such a predisposition, founders often identify similar companies and then look at the investors that invested in them.

Case Study

John is building a Company that uses AI to automate the workflows of sales teams. In order to identify investors that have a predisposition in favour of this thesis, he looks at investors that have previously invested in AI tools to automate the workflows of customer success teams.
By examining the prior investing patterns of investors, users are able to identify which investors have a predisposition in favour of their Company’s thesis.
A common strategy among founders is to identify and pursue investors that have previously invested in similar companies and have seen strong returns. For instance, a food delivery startup in Finland may want to identify and pursue the early investors in DoorDash (the food delivery giant in the US).

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Investors in Select Companies

With Metal, founders can identify investors in similar companies in an efficient manner.
1

Developing Lists of Similar Companies

Users can first use the “Company Search” module to enter their Company description. Based on this description, Metal’s algorithm identifies all VC-backed companies that are similar to the provided description.Subsequently, from the search results, users can shortlist companies that are actually similar, and are not direct competitors. Shortlisted companies can be saved in the form of a list.
2

Identifying Investors behind Shortlisted Companies

Once a list has been saved, users can then load that in the “Prior Investments” filter within the “Similarity” filter header on Investor Search. This allows users to view all investors that invested in any of the shortlisted companies. Users can then apply other filters in tandem to further refine their investor search list.
With the above two-step process, founders can comprehensively identify all investors that have invested in similar companies. Additionally, founders can also apply additional filters to further refine the list of investors that have invested in similar players.

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Enable Safe Mode

When shortlisting companies that are similar, users will inevitably run across a lot of companies that are direct competitors, often in the same market(s) as the user’s Company. Users can shortlist direct competitors and save these to a separate list. Subsequently, users can load the list of direct competitors into the Safe Mode filter — this eliminates from search results all investors that have previously invested in any of the user’s direct competitors. In many cases, founders end up inadvertently talking to investors that have previously invested in their direct competitors. With the above functionality, founders can avoid pursuing firms that are active investors in a direct competitor.