Half of The Swarm customers are VC firms (including 500 Global, Contrary Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, and many others). Here's why The Swarm is a particularly great tool for them.
With more VC firms out there than ever before, investors need to choose their deals wisely and differentiate themselves to startups. Using the power of networks, they can do just that.
The old way doesn't scale
GPs today are connected to thousands of individuals on LinkedIn. While these connections are essential to their portfolio companies’ growth, it's hard for the team to see all of their connections in one place when helping their startups with hiring or customer discovery. Until now, most investors had come up with a manual workaround for this. For example, an analyst would be in charge of manually collecting GPs’ various connections from LinkedIn and other websites onto a single Google Sheet. That Sheet was then mined for potential candidates, customers, and attendees for different portfolio companies and events.
Switching to Go-To-Network
Using The Swarm and Go-To-Network, investors can now make smarter decisions by using their previously untapped network to conduct due diligence on potential founders and back-channel references. They can also provide added value to their portfolio companies by giving founders access to their network, cross-pollinating relationships across portfolio companies, and identifying sales and talent opportunities on their portfolio companies’ behalf. Capital is a commodity, but your network is your proprietary asset that can differentiate you in the market, it’s time to put it to work.
Here's an example of of Go-To-Network can help with portcos introductions:
“I do a lot of introducing founders to people who are experts in their field,” says Selin from 500 Emerging Europe. “So, for instance, who can give Turkish founders advice about launching a product in the US? Who can provide mentorship? Who can give them customer advice?”
500 EE is using The Swarm to facilitate these introductions and find new experts to connect founders to — accelerating their success, and by extension, 500 Emerging Europe’s. Read more about 500EE's customer story here.
