Investors care about metrics, especially your startup’s metrics –number of non-paying customers versus paying customers, customer’s lifetime value, growth rate, total revenue month over month, and the list goes on and on. A lot of times, they’re using data tools to evaluate these metrics even before you pitch them.
For example, Mattermark allows investors to quantify the growth of potentially lucrative startups. But what you might not know is you can use the same tools. Specifically, you can see where you and your competitors stand according to Mattermark’s data, but evaluate the growth of potential investors, which can provide crucial information when you’re deciding on where to seek funding. In both cases, using this data will put you in a better position to get funded because you’ll have a more robust view of the competitive landscape and where you fall within it, as well as how investors stack up against one another.
Mattermark’s rankings incorporate data from Twitter, news sites, SEC filings, LinkedIn, AngelList, CrunchBase, and the company’s own proprietary Startup Index in order to spot and track potential opportunities.
Want more resources like this? Subscribe to the HPA newsletter!
For each startup, Mattermark details a Growth Score and a Mindshare Score by using historical data to track a company’s success in these areas.
The Growth Score tracks five metrics and also measures how they change over time:
· Website visitors
· Mobile downloads
· Social media metrics
· Employees
· Publicly announced funding
The Mindshare Score tracks six signals and measures how they change over time, including:
· Estimated web traffic
· Estimated mobile app downloads
· Inbound links from other websites
· Company profile followers on Twitter
· Company page likes on Facebook
· Company page followers on LinkedIn
The Mindshare score identifies companies whose online footprint is growing the fastest. It is measured on a weekly basis and averaged over time to provide a trending metric over time. So you will see that the Mindshare score is graphed against weekly momentum. A positive score indicates aggregate growth, and a score closer to zero indicates a plateau, while a negative score indicates a declining online presence.
You can also stack investors against their competitors, which can help you make determinations about from whom to seek investment. Mattermark’s system analyzes the growth signals for more than 1M private investors. Using this data, they have ranked active investors based on the average growth scores of their active portfolio companies.
For each investor Mattermark also provides profiles that break down the industries, growth levels, business models, location, and funding stages of their investments. The four key features to pay attention to are:
1. Funding stage
2. Location
3. Industry
4. Portfolio companies
If your business aligns with an investor’s criteria for funding stage, location, and industry, your chances of being funded increase. Moreover, you can quickly assess their portfolio companies to see if you would fit into their portfolio, and get an idea of how much and for how long investors invested in them. You can also take this data analysis further and reach out to portfolio companies to learn more about their experience with their investors aid in your research.
Ultimately, using data to lay the groundwork for your next funding campaign, whether it be in the near-term or the future, can help increase your chances for success.
Get more articles like this when you subscribe to our newsletter.
About Hyde Park Angels
Hyde Park Angels is the largest and most active angel group in the Midwest. With a membership of over 100 successful entrepreneurs, executives, and venture capitalists, the organization prides itself on providing critical strategic expertise to entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial community. By leveraging the members’ deep and broad knowledge of multiple industries and financial capital, Hyde Park Angels has driven multiple exits and invested millions of dollars in over 40 portfolio companies that have created over 850 jobs in the Midwest since 2006.
About the Author
Amutha Muthumukar
Amutha is a marketing intern at Hyde Park Angels. Her role is to assess analytic tools and develop strategies to further HPA’s social media campaigns. She also works to maintain community relationships and increase HPA’s community engagement. Previously, she has worked with startups on redesigning social marketing campaigns through data analysis.
.jpg)
