Poach

About Poach

Poach is a specialized dealflow intelligence platform designed for venture capital investors, angel investors, and other professionals seeking a competitive edge in discovering startup talent. At its core, Poach addresses a fundamental challenge in venture capital: finding high-potential founders as early as possible, often before they formally enter a fundraising process. The platform operates on a simple but powerful premise. It systematically tracks the social media activity of top-tier venture capitalists, specifically who they follow on platforms like Twitter. These follows are treated as a leading indicator of interest, serving as a high-quality signal that sits between a traditional warm introduction and a cold inbound message. By monitoring this activity, Poach identifies individuals who are catching the attention of savvy investors, providing users with a curated list of promising prospects. The platform then enriches these raw signals with professional data from LinkedIn and applies AI-powered labeling to categorize individuals, such as "founder," "engineer," or "researcher." The final output is clean, actionable data delivered via daily email summaries and comprehensive CSV exports, enabling investors to filter and find exactly the type of talent that aligns with their investment thesis. Poach transforms passive social observations into an active, structured, and foundational component of a modern investor's sourcing strategy.

Features of Poach

VC Social Tracking

Poach continuously monitors the Twitter accounts of prominent venture capitalists to see which new individuals they choose to follow. This activity is a foundational signal, as a VC's follow often represents early, non-public interest in a founder or innovator. By aggregating this data across numerous investors, the platform surfaces people who are gaining traction in the private networks of industry insiders long before they appear on standard radars or fundraising platforms.

Identity Resolution & Enrichment

The platform goes beyond a Twitter handle by employing proprietary identity resolution to match social profiles with corresponding LinkedIn accounts. This process enriches each lead record with verified professional history, including work experience, education, and career trajectory. This enrichment transforms a simple username into a comprehensive professional profile, providing the contextual depth needed to make informed assessments about a person's background and potential.

AI-Powered Categorization

Using artificial intelligence, Poach analyzes the combined data from Twitter bios and LinkedIn profiles to automatically label each individual. It applies specific, actionable tags such as "founder," "funded," "engineering," "research," or "investor." This automated labeling provides immediate, at-a-glance segmentation, allowing users to quickly filter thousands of leads down to the precise cohort they wish to target, such as unfunded technical founders.

Raw Data Delivery & Export

Poach delivers its intelligence in a practical, flexible format. Users receive a daily email digest with executive summaries of new leads, accompanied by a full CSV file attachment. This CSV contains all the enriched data points and AI-generated labels in a structured table. This raw data delivery empowers users to import the information directly into their own CRM systems, perform custom analyses, or set up personalized filtering criteria beyond the platform's standard interface.

Use Cases of Poach

Sourcing Stealth-Mode Founders

Early-stage venture capital firms and angel investors use Poach to identify founders who are operating in stealth mode, before they publicly announce their company or begin a formal fundraise. By filtering for profiles labeled "founder" but not "funded," investors can discover and engage with promising talent at the earliest possible moment, often gaining a multi-month advantage over the broader market.

Building a Thematic Pipeline

Investment professionals focusing on specific sectors, such as artificial intelligence, climate tech, or web3, utilize Poach to find individuals whose backgrounds and online activity align with their thesis. The AI labels for "research," "engineering," or "web3" help quickly surface experts and builders transitioning into entrepreneurship within a particular technological domain.

Competitive Dealflow Intelligence

VCs use the platform to monitor the sourcing patterns of competing firms. By seeing which founders are being followed by partners at other top-tier funds, a firm can gauge market interest and identify highly sought-after opportunities they may have missed, ensuring their pipeline remains competitive with industry leaders.

Recruiting for Portfolio Companies

Beyond pure investment sourcing, venture capital associates and talent partners leverage Poach to identify potential hires for their existing portfolio companies. The ability to find highly skilled engineers, product managers, or researchers who are already on the radar of investors provides a valuable stream of pre-vetted candidate leads for critical roles.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Poach provides a signal that is fundamentally different from, but complementary to, a warm introduction. A warm introduction relies on a shared connection to facilitate an introduction. Poach's signal is based on observable interest from an investor, indicated by a social media follow. It is a data point that suggests a founder is on an investor's radar, which can then be used to craft a more informed and contextual cold outreach or to seek a proper introduction, effectively improving the quality and timing of your engagement.

What is the source of Poach's data?

The primary source data comes from public social media platforms, specifically Twitter (X). Poach monitors the public following lists of venture capitalists. It then enriches this foundational data with professional information from public LinkedIn profiles. All data is sourced from publicly available information, and the platform's proprietary technology performs the matching and analysis to generate its insights and labels.

Can I filter leads based on specific criteria?

Yes, this is a core functionality of Poach. The AI-powered labeling system allows for powerful filtering. The delivered CSV files contain columns for all labels and data points, enabling you to use spreadsheet software or import into a CRM to filter for exact matches. Common filters include "founder AND NOT funded" for early-stage leads, or specific combinations like "engineering AND web3" for thematic sourcing.

How current is the lead information?

Poach is designed for timely discovery. The platform provides daily updates, with a fresh email digest and CSV export sent each morning. This ensures you are receiving information on new signals—VCs following new people—within a 24-hour window, allowing you to act on opportunities while they are still nascent and before they become widely known in the investment community.