The Challenge

Backed by Serena Ventures, KLIQ is building an AI driven business software for entrepreneurs whose product is their content. They provide the content commerce platform to monetize directly from their audience. As a startup that has previously raised from notable institutional investors, and as someone that otherwise has a vast network, the main challenge for Ben was around identifying the right people in his network that could introduce him to target investors.

Intro Pathways via Metal

With Metal, Ben was able to plug in his network by connecting his Gmail and LinkedIn accounts. He was able to add in the names of his existing investors, as well as manually provide names of VC-backed founders that he knew well that weren’t necessarily identified via other data sources.

Equipped with data on venture deals from the past two decades, Metal is able to identify which of Ben’s connections are VC-backed founders and/or investors. For VC-backed founders, Metal knows which investors they have previously raised capital from. For investors, the platform has insight on which companies they have invested in, and which other investors those companies have raised from.

Based on the above, Metal is able to identify which of Ben’s connections can introduce him to a given investor. With this insight, Ben is now able to focus his time on actually reaching out to the right folks and getting introductions (as opposed to spending hours researching potential intro paths).

Impact on the Fundraising Process

With Metal, users can build a replicable process to get introductions, enhancing their investor relations and enabling them to move quickly through the round while building significant momentum in the process.

The ability to consistently access additional investors also breeds confidence and creates optionality. There is a very direct causality between the number of investor meetings and the probability of a successful close.

Executive Summary

•  Building a process around getting introduction creates optionality and breeds confidence
•    Each additional investor meeting directly improves the probability of closing
•  Automating the research part via software creates bandwidth to actually line up investor meetings