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When qualifying a given investment firm, the most important consideration is often any prior investments they have made in your specific operating space.

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Similar Investments

On any given investor profile, users can navigate to Intelligence > Investments > Similar Investments to view the most similar prior investments that the investor had made. The below visual shows the range of possibilities:
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Scenario 1 -- Invested in Direct Competitors

Investor has invested in direct competitors, which are defined as companies solving the same problem for the same customers as your Company.
Actionable Insight: Avoid these investors unless the firm in question is an accelerator. Many accelerators, including YCombinator, invest in direct competitors. This is, however, the exception and not the norm. In most cases, VC firms won’t consider investments in companies that compete directly with an existing portfolio company.
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Scenario 2 -- Invested in Similar Companies

Investor has invested in one or similar companies that are adjacent or similar to your solution. The solution may not be identical to that of your Company, but it is directionally similar.
Actionable Insight: Prioritise these investors, as they already believe in the broader direction in which you are building.
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Scenario 3 -- Invested in Adjacent Spaces

Investor has invested in adjacent spaces, but has not yet invested in your specific category. As an example, if you are building a product focused on AI for Customer Success, perhaps the investor has invested in AI for Sales Outbound.
Actionable Insight: Prioritise these investors, as they already believe in the broader direction in which you are building.
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Scenario 4 -- No Relatable Investments

In this scenario, which is fairly rare, it is still important to be aware of the lack of prior work by the investor within your specific operating space.
Understanding a given investor’s prior work in your specific semantic space can be immensely beneficial prior to investor calls.

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Investing Thesis

On any given investor profile, users can navigate to Intelligence > Patterns > Thesis to view the specific investing theses for the investor that are most relevant or applicable to your Company. For a given thesis that is relevant to your Company, you can click on the “View Details” button to view all the specific companies that the investor has backed within that thesis. Hovering on a given company shows a brief description of what the company does. Venture investors often tend to invest in patterns — if they believe in a specific market opportunity (I.e. P2P payments), they often fund multiple companies within that thesis. Let’s look at a specific investing thesis:

AI-Driven Content Creation and Synthetic Media

Thesis Description: AI-powered generative models (text, image, video) are revolutionising creative industries, enabling mass personalisation and automating labor-intensive content tasks. Investors believe these platforms can disrupt entertainment, marketing, and media production.
Techstars, one of the leading accelerators in the US, has invested in a broad range of companies within this thesis:\ The above screenshot shows investments made by Techstars within the AI-Driven Content Creation thesis.