Poach

About Poach

Poach is a sophisticated dealflow intelligence platform designed for venture capitalists and early-stage investors. It operates on a simple yet powerful premise: to identify promising startup founders before they officially enter a fundraising round. The platform achieves this by continuously monitoring the social media activity of top-tier venture capitalists, specifically who they follow on Twitter (X). These follows are treated as high-quality, early signals of investor interest. Poach then enriches this raw signal with professional data from LinkedIn and applies AI-powered analysis to categorize individuals. The result is a daily stream of actionable, enriched lead data delivered directly to investors' inboxes. This provides a critical competitive edge, offering a signal quality that sits uniquely between a warm introduction and cold inbound outreach, effectively expanding and de-risking an investor's sourcing pipeline.

Features of Poach

VC Social Tracking

Poach's core engine automatically tracks and analyzes the Twitter follow patterns of a curated list of top-tier venture capitalists. It identifies new accounts these VCs follow, which often serve as a leading indicator of interest in emerging founders or interesting individuals long before any public fundraising announcement is made. This turns passive social signals into an active, scannable feed of potential opportunities.

Cross-Platform Identity Enrichment

The platform employs proprietary identity resolution technology to match discovered Twitter profiles with their corresponding LinkedIn accounts. This process automatically enriches each lead record with verified professional details, including current and past work history, educational background, and geographic location, transforming a social handle into a comprehensive professional profile.

AI-Powered Categorization & Bio Generation

Using advanced AI, Poach analyzes the combined Twitter and LinkedIn data to automatically label each person with relevant tags such as "founder," "engineering," "funded," or "research." It also generates a concise, informative medium bio summarizing the individual's background and current focus, saving hours of manual research and profile vetting.

Raw Data Export & Custom Filtering

Users receive complete, raw data via daily CSV exports attached to their email digest. This allows for maximum flexibility, enabling investors to import leads directly into their CRM or apply custom filters—such as finding "founder" labels without the "funded" tag—to pinpoint exactly the type of talent or investment opportunity that matches their specific thesis.

Use Cases of Poach

Proactive Founder Sourcing for Seed VCs

Early-stage seed funds use Poach to break the reliance on inbound applications and network-driven warm intros. By filtering for unfunded founders who are newly followed by respected VCs, they can identify and engage with promising talent months before a formal seed round is launched, securing a position at the very front of the line.

Talent Scouting for Growth-Stage Firms & Corporates

Growth equity firms and corporate development teams utilize Poach to scout for exceptional executive or technical talent, such as founding engineers or product leaders from nascent companies. The AI labels help quickly surface individuals with specific skill sets (e.g., "engineering," "product") who are gaining early market recognition.

Thesis-Driven Investment Research

Investment analysts and associates employ Poach's filtering and export capabilities to conduct targeted research. For example, a firm focused on AI can set up alerts for "research" labels or track VCs known for deep tech investments to systematically discover academics and scientists transitioning to entrepreneurship.

Competitive & Market Intelligence

Partners and principals leverage the platform for competitive intelligence. By observing which founders or themes are attracting attention from competing funds, they can validate emerging trends, understand competitor focus areas, and ensure they are not missing key movements within their investment landscape.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Poach's signal compare to a warm intro?

Poach provides a signal that is qualitatively superior to cold inbound but does not replace the context and trust of a genuine warm introduction. It is best described as a "pre-warm" lead—you are identifying a founder who has already garnered organic interest from a respected investor, giving you a highly relevant and timely reason to reach out with a contextualized message.

What is the source and frequency of the data?

The primary data source is Twitter (X), where Poach monitors the follow actions of a selected list of VC accounts. This data is enriched daily with professional information from LinkedIn. Subscribers receive a curated digest of new leads via email every morning, complete with an attached CSV containing the full, updated dataset.

Can I filter for very specific types of founders?

Absolutely. The power of Poach lies in its raw data delivery and AI labels. Using the daily CSV export, you can filter based on any combination of labels, location, bio keywords, or the specific VC who followed them. A common filter is label:founder AND NOT label:funded to find stealth-mode founders.

How accurate is the AI labeling and LinkedIn matching?

Poach utilizes advanced proprietary algorithms for both identity resolution and categorization, resulting in high accuracy. The LinkedIn matching is designed to find the correct professional profile, while the AI labels are derived from analyzing bios, work history, and self-descriptions across both platforms. The system continuously improves, and all data is provided for your final verification.