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The Metal pipeline is a fully customizable fundraising CRM — built to track every investor interaction from first contact to close. Beyond basic stage management, it comes with a set of capabilities that give founders granular control over how they view, organize, and act on their pipeline data.

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Getting Investors In

To auto-populate your prior investor relationships into Metal, users have to options:

Import via Gmail

Metal scans email history to import prior investors relationships.

Found under Actions → Import Data.

Import via CSV

Import a CRV via Airtable, Notion or other CRMs.

Found under Actions → Import Data.
With each option, Metal allows users to select which specific investors to import. The collaborative process allows users to automatically import an initial list and then to select which investors to add to a given pipeline.

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Views

Consistent with industry norms for CRMs, the investor pipeline supports two views, switchable from the View Settings control in the pipeline toolbar:

List View

All investors in a single scrollable list, grouped by stage. Best for managing data, adding notes, sorting and filtering, and doing bulk updates. This is the default working view for most founders.

Board View

Investors as cards in columns by stage. Best for seeing the shape of the pipeline at a glance — how many investors are at each stage, where things are clustered, and where the process has stalled.

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Attributes

Attributes are the data columns that appear across investor entries in the pipeline. They can be added, removed, and reordered from the Add/Edit Columns button.

Built-in Attributes

Pre-populated from Metal’s investor intelligence. They include investor type, deal counts over the last 3 and 12 months, % of investments by stage, sector and geography, and percentage of rounds led.

Custom Attributes

Can be created for any data not covered by built-in attributes. Supported types include text, number, checkbox, date, and dropdown — useful for tracking things specific to your raise such as intro source, deck sent date, or partner name.

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Stages

Stages define the structure of the pipeline and map directly to Kanban columns in Board View and the Stage field on each investor entry. They can be renamed, reordered, added, or removed via the Edit Stages option on the stage name dropdown.
Name stages after the action required, not just the status — for example, “Seeking Intros” or “Move to Due Diligence” rather than “Intro” or “Diligence”. This makes it immediately clear what needs to happen for each investor in the stage.

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Search, Filter & Group

Search

Locate investors by name instantly, without scrolling through the full list.

Filter

Narrow the pipeline view by any combination of built-in or custom attributes.

Group

Organizes investors by stage to see which investors are at each point in the process.

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Notes

Each investor entry in the pipeline has a Notes field for capturing context that isn’t reflected in stages or attributes — what was discussed on the last call, what the investor asked for, where the relationship stands, or what needs to happen next. Notes serve as institutional memory across the raise. As conversations with an investor evolve over weeks or months, the notes field keeps the full history in one place — so nothing gets lost between calls and follow-ups are grounded in what was actually said.

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Relevance Ranks

Metal assigns a Relevance Rank to each investor in the pipeline based on how well their profile maps to your fundraising configuration — stage, sector, geography, check size, and thesis alignment. This rank is visible directly in the pipeline and updates as your configuration or the investor’s activity changes.
Use relevance ranks to prioritize outreach within a stage — focusing time on the investors most structurally aligned with your round, rather than working through the list arbitrarily.

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Quick Access to Investor Profiles

Clicking on any investor name in the pipeline opens their full Investor Profile — the complete intelligence view for that investor without leaving the pipeline context. Profiles are structured across three tabs:

Intelligence

Understand how this investor actually behaves based on historical activity — e.g. stage, sector, and geography breakdowns.

Access

See how to get access of this investor — intro pathways through your network, portfolio founders who can make a warm introduction.

Activity

All engagement history in one place — notes, synced emails, meetings, contacts, and reminders tied to this investor.
This makes it possible to review everything known about an investor — and take action — directly from the pipeline row, without navigating away.

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Pipeline Sharing

Pipelines can be shared with co-founders, advisors, or team members via a secure, customizable link. To share, go to Actions → Share Pipeline and configure the following:
  1. Permissions — View Only, Add/Edit Attributes, or Add Deals/Investors
  2. Access control — restrict access to specific email addresses; recipients must sign in with the same email to view the pipeline
  3. Password protection — add an optional password for an extra layer of security
  4. Expiry date — set a date after which the link stops working
Recipients are taken directly to the shared pipeline on sign-in and can act within whatever permissions have been granted.

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Export

Pipeline data can be exported at any time via Actions → Export Data. The export generates a spreadsheet (.xlsx) containing all investors, stage data, and any custom attributes added.
Note that enriched profile data from Metal’s database — such as third-party deal intelligence — is not included in the export, only user-generated data.