Claude Skill · investor-research

Investor Research — Claude Skill for Founders

Turn a fundraising goal into a qualified, tiered investor target list with conflict checks, warm-intro paths and a recommended outreach sequence.

Activates when the user wants to identify, evaluate or prioritise investors — "who should I pitch?", "find me investors", "build an investor list", or any VC/angel targeting question.

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When to use it

The founder is preparing to fundraise and needs a target investor list.
The founder has a list of investors and wants to qualify or prioritise them.
The founder asks which VCs or angels fit their stage, sector or geography.
The founder wants to understand a specific fund's thesis, portfolio or decision process.

What Claude needs from you

Stage, sector, location, target round size, business model and existing investor relationships.
Geographic preferences, VC-only vs. angel-only vs. both, and investors already in conversation.
Firms to avoid explicitly — for example known portfolio conflicts.

The workflow

Step 1
Read startup context
Stage, sector, geography, round size and existing investors.
Step 2
Define investor criteria
Stage match, sector focus, check size range, geographic relevance and conflict exclusions.
Step 3
Build the raw list
Capture firm, partner, stage focus, sector focus, check size, fund vintage, portfolio and source URL.
Step 4
Check for conflicts
Flag firms with a directly competing portfolio company — they go on a conflicts list, not the target list.
Step 5
Score and tier
Assign Tier 1 (prioritise), Tier 2 (pursue) or Tier 3 (backfill) using the 7-point filter.
Step 6
Identify warm paths
For every Tier 1 investor, suggest mutual connections, portfolio founder intros, accelerator networks or conference overlap.
Step 7
Deliver the target list
A sortable table grouped by tier, plus conflicts and research gaps.

What you get back

A markdown table grouped by tier (firm, partner, stage focus, sector fit, check size, recent fund, conflict, warm path, notes), followed by a conflicts section and a research-gaps section.

## Tier 1 — High Priority

| Firm | Partner | Stage Focus | Sector Fit | Check Size | Recent Fund | Conflict? | Warm Path |
|------|---------|-------------|------------|------------|-------------|-----------|-----------|
| Boldstart Ventures | Ed Sim | Pre-seed/Seed | Developer tools | $1–3M | $160M Fund IV (2023) | None | Active on dev-tools topics; check portfolio founder overlap |

Frameworks & best practices

The 7-point qualification filter

Stage fit — binary. A Series B fund will not lead your seed round.
Sector focus — judge by the last 10 investments, not the website copy.
Check size match — a $2B fund rarely writes $500K cheques; a $50M fund rarely leads $20M rounds.
Portfolio conflicts — the most common reason a pitch is dead on arrival. Check quiet portfolio companies too.
Fund vintage — prefer firms that closed a fund within the last 18 months.
Geographic relevance — some funds still only invest locally or need board proximity.
Partner-level interest — the right partner matters as much as the right firm.

Tiering framework

Tier 1 — matches 6–7 criteria with a warm path. Pursue first.
Tier 2 — matches 4–5 criteria. Second wave.
Tier 3 — matches 3 criteria. Backfill only once Tier 1 and 2 are exhausted.

Sourcing investor information

Crunchbase / PitchBook for fund size, recent investments and portfolio.
Firm website for the stated thesis and partner bios.
Partner posts and newsletters — recent writing beats an old "About" page.
SEC Form D filings for undisclosed fund sizes.
Portfolio founder back-channels — the single best diligence on an investor.

Common mistakes

Spraying 200 cold emails. 30 well-introduced conversations beat 200 cold ones.
Ignoring portfolio conflicts and wasting weeks on firms that can never invest.
Pitching the wrong partner at a multi-partner firm.
Targeting only brand-name funds — emerging funds decide faster and lead earlier.
Not tracking the pipeline: status and next action for every investor.

Angel investor considerations

Angels decide in days but typically write $25K–$250K.
Prefer angels with operational experience in your sector.
Syndicates aggregate small cheques into a meaningful allocation.
Understand the signalling implications of money from potential acquirers or competitors.

Better with the CAPLINK MCP Server

With the CAPLINK MCP Server connected, Claude runs this skill against 14,000+ verified investors in CAPLINK — filtering by stage, focus area, ticket size and region — and cross-checks the result against the contacts already in your CRM pipeline.

search_investors
get_investor_favorites
get_crm_contacts
get_messages

See all MCP tools

Example prompts

"We're raising a $2.5M seed round for a developer tools company based in SF. Help me build an investor list."

Claude defines the criteria, builds the raw list with sources, removes conflicts, tiers every firm and proposes the outreach order with warm-intro paths.

"I have a list of 15 VCs I want to pitch. Can you help me prioritise?"

Claude runs each firm through the 7-point filter, re-tiers the list, flags conflicts you may have missed and names the 5 to pitch first.

Related skills

pitch-deck

Pitch Deck

Build or rebuild a fundraising pitch deck slide by slide, with an assertion-style title, a key message, supporting content, a visual suggestion and the investor question each slide answers.

Read the skill

fundraising-email

Fundraising Email

Draft short, specific, personalised investor emails that get answered — one of five types, each with its own structure, tone and length.

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Download the Investor Research skill

One markdown file. Drop it into your Claude project and start working with your fundraising data.

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