How Start-Ups Can Boost Online Visibility with Venture Capitalists

Advice from a data scientist, whose job is to finds start-ups online.

The venture capital industry is increasingly data-driven, and it’s essential for CEOs to adapt to this trend to enhance your visibility and appeal. Here are some practical tips to increase your online presence with venture capitalists, from a data scientist whose job it is to find start-ups online!

1. Engage with Private Market Data Providers

Platforms like Crunchbase, Pitchbook, CB Insights, Beauhurst, and Tracxn are crucial for your visibility. Someone in the company should have responsibility for ensuring your company’s information is kept up to date on these platforms. At the bare minimum, they should aim to keep the following columns accurate and up to date on as many platforms as possible.

(1) Funding rounds & grants

(2) Key contact details, with an email address VCs can use to get in touch with your team

(3) Location of your company

(4) Sector Tags

(5) A description of your company that is up-to-date, clear, and captivating. Often platforms ask for both a short and a longer description. Make sure both are up to scratch.

When venture firms are looking for companies to meet on a road show or beginning a deep dive into your sector, a crude search using these factors is often where they will start. Similarly, industry bodies and the press often start with a search on these datasets when trying to find companies for awards, report features and news mentions.

Additionally, most VC firms automatically pull this data into their CRMs when they add your company to their pipeline. Information on these platforms will therefore continue to affect your chances of investment, long past the initial search. For the increasing number of data driven VCs, the importance of providing up-to-date and compelling data is more important still.

The following links explain how to update your company’s information for Pitchbook, Crunchbase and CB Insights, who are three of the major sites, but time spent updating other databases would be time well spent (Beauhurst, Tracxn, Dealroom, Preqin, F6S, Privco and Angel List).

I would also recommend that you urge your investors to also keep their own profiles updated too, particularly in relation to their track record. Typically, the next step after looking at your company’s page is to look at the pages of your investor base. VCs always like to be reassured by who they would be sitting with the board meetings.

2. Optimize LinkedIn Presence

Ensure your entire team, especially key executives, have fully updated LinkedIn profiles. Some of the easiest changes to make are:

(1) Set your profiles to public for enhanced discoverability.

(2) Use generic job titles in your employment history (Founder, CEO, Scientist, Engineer etc) to make sure you aren’t accidentally overlooked when VCs use LinkedIn to identify founders they want to meet.

(3) Make sure the company has a location, ideally your city, not just your country.

(4) Link the company names and universities in your employment and education to their actual LinkedIn pages. If they are linked, the companies & university’s logo typically appears next to the job / degree description.

(5) Regularly send connection requests to people you meet to increase the number of shared contacts with VCs.

(6) If you have patents or notable achievements, highlight them on LinkedIn. It’s not the time to be humble.

(7) Engage with posts, even if it is only a few a week. Better still, put out some content.

3. Invest in Your Website

Your website should be a comprehensive resource for information about your company. Include links to patents, news articles, and other relevant data. Remember, junior staff in venture capital firms often conduct initial research, so make your website informative, easily navigable and attractive. Having a good website is also critical for hiring. People want to join companies that are funded and compelling. Emphasising this will be crucial to your growth. Some examples of companies with compelling websites from Future Planet Capital’s portfolio are RegentCraft, RovCo and Captura.

In short, building a good website, early on, is time and money well spent.

I hope this is helpful, and if you have any questions, or any tips and suggestions others could benefit from, please reach out to me at p.mitchell@futureplanetcapital.com.

Best wishes,

Peter