Investor Guide
Publish a mandate, find and privately track startups, follow their execution records, and move to qualified engagement.
This guide is for capital providers — VC firms and their team members, angels, scouts, family offices, accelerators, and corporate venture groups — using the Startup Capital Marketplace to discover and follow startups through their verified execution records.
The short version: publish an accurate mandate, watch quietly for as long as you like, and every step past watching is an explicit, attributed action the founder controls.
1. Get verified
Marketplace actions — searching startups, saving, following, requesting engagement — require a verified identity, and firm-scoped features require a verified firm affiliation. Verification distinguishes who you are, which firm you act for, what you have self-reported, and what Sureshake has observed; startups see that distinction wherever your profile appears.
2. Publish your mandate
A mandate tells the marketplace — and founders searching it — what you actually want to see right now. Mandates are principal-scoped: you can hold personal mandates and, with a verified affiliation, mandates for your firm. Manage personal mandates from your profile page and firm mandates from the firm's entity workspace.
A mandate covers stage, sector, geography, check range, lead behavior, exclusions, and deployment status. Two properties matter:
- Versioned, with observed history. What you declare is kept separate from what Sureshake observes. Founders see both.
- Freshness counts. Stale mandates carry a visible warning and are downgraded in automated candidate generation. Reconfirming your deployment status regularly keeps your mandate eligible.
Match quality starts here. Suggestions match on explicit mandate fit before execution evidence, so a precise mandate produces fewer, better candidates — and fewer irrelevant founder approaches.
3. Find startups
- Search. The startup search — the Startups mode of the directory — queries public profile facts and public evidence only — the query contract is strictly public-only, so nothing you have not been granted can influence or leak into results.
- Match suggestions. Suggestions arrive with their full rationale:
explicit match reasons, stated unknowns, known conflicts, and the
freshness of each input. There is no universal match percentage, no
pay-to-rank, and no popularity or pedigree boosts. Dismiss a suggestion
with a structured reason (
too early,outside thesis,conflicted,not relevant) and the feedback is recorded.
4. Save privately and organize watchlists
Research quietly before you ever appear on a founder's radar:
- Private saves. Saving a startup profile notifies no one and grants you no access.
- Watchlists. Organize saved startups into named watchlists and move them as your view changes. Watchlists are private to you.
- Firm notes. Notes on a startup are scoped to your firm's workspace. They never appear on the startup's profile or portable record.
5. Tune your alerts
Watchlist alerts are designed to answer what changed, not to relay every post:
- Alerts fire only on material changes backed by founder-approved evidence, and each alert explains exactly which approved evidence caused it (see your Action Center).
- Configure which triggers you care about and your digest cadence under Settings → Notifications.
6. Request to follow
When a startup earns ongoing attention, request to follow it from its profile. A follow request is a small, honest pitch — it states:
- Why the company fits your current mandate,
- the tier of access you are asking for,
- what you want to observe, and
- a duration (up to 365 days).
The founder can accept, narrow the tier, or decline. Expect narrowing — it is a normal first response, not a rejection.
Once accepted:
- Access is time-bound and renewable; the founder can pause, narrow, or revoke at any time, and revocation is immediate.
- You receive only founder-approved updates and objects for your tier.
- Following never includes the pitch deck, financial statements, or a data room by default — those arrive only through deeper, separately permissioned grants.
Follower access shows season targets, approved weekly updates, and selected milestones — enough to judge execution over time.
Request a meeting, a selected report, or deeper access. Every request carries a subject and a reason, and the founder decides.
If the founder admits you to diligence, each item — reports, deck, cap table, documents — is separately permissioned.
7. Qualified engagement
Engagement stages are explicit and never inferred: view, save, follow request, accepted follow, meeting, diligence, indication, term sheet, close. Two rules protect everyone:
- Passive signals never become capital outcomes. A view or a save is not access and is never presented as such.
- Founders can invite you — to a meeting, a report, or a Capital Objective — and an invitation grants nothing until you act on it.
What founders see about you
| They see | They do not see |
|---|---|
| Your verified identity, firm, and mandate on a follow request | That you saved or watchlisted them |
| Your stated reason, tier, observation, and duration | Your firm's private notes |
| Your engagement requests and responses | Your other watchlist entries or pipeline |
API
Everything in this guide is API-accessible — mandates, search, saves, watchlists, alert preferences, follow requests, and engagement requests. See the Startup Marketplace endpoints.