1,389 records, and the short list that fits your round
A first-time founder's investor list is usually assembled by hand: names scraped from news stories, introductions half remembered, a spreadsheet that grows without ever getting sharper. Vanelo starts you from 1,389 investor records and builds an automated target list against your round, matched on stage, sector and ticket compatibility, then tracks every name you approach through an eight-stage pipeline.
What is actually in the database
1,389 records, split 387 VC firms and 1,002 angels. Those two numbers add up to the whole database, so every record is one or the other, and the balance tips heavily towards angels: more than two thirds of the database is individual investors rather than firms.
83 of the records are UK-based. That number is worth sitting with, because it is the single fact that shapes how the matching works. A database of 1,389 that filtered to UK-only would hand a Birmingham founder a list of 83 names and call it a market. Vanelo does not do that.
The list you get is built against your round, so it moves when your round moves. Change the ask on your round record and you are asking a different question of the same 1,389 records.
1,389 records, two kinds
387 VC firms and 1,002 angel investors, with 83 of the total based in the UK.
You are not browsing all of it. The automated target list runs three eligibility tests against your round and returns the investors your round is actually compatible with.
Three tests decide who is on your list
Eligibility is stage, sector and ticket compatibility. An investor has to pass all three to appear, which is what separates a target list from a contact list.
Stage match
Investors back companies at the stage they invest at. An investor who only comes in later than where you are now is not a slow yes, they are a no with a polite delay attached, and the stage test keeps them off the list you are working this month.
Sector match
Sector is the second filter, and the one founders most often talk themselves out of respecting. A generalist reputation is not the same as a sector an investor actually deploys into, so the list is built on the sectors on the record rather than on optimism.
Ticket compatibility
Your funding ask has to be compatible with the cheque an investor writes. Ask for too little of a fund and you are below their minimum; ask for too much of an angel and no single conversation can close it. Ticket compatibility is measured against the ask on your round.
Location orders, it does not filter
Location changes the order your results come back in rather than deciding who is in them. Nearby investors surface first, and an investor who passes all three tests is never dropped from your list for being somewhere else.
Why location orders rather than filters
It is a small design decision with a large effect on a first raise. Treat location as an eligibility test and it does what all filters do: it removes people. Treat it as an ordering rule and it does what a good list does, which is decide what you read first.
The arithmetic makes the point. If location were a hard filter, a UK founder's entire universe would be the 83 UK-based records, before stage, sector and ticket compatibility had removed a single one of them. Every genuinely compatible investor outside those 83 would have been cut for a reason that has nothing to do with whether they would fund you.
So the three tests decide the list, and location decides the reading order. You still get local names at the top, which is usually where a first conversation is easiest to get. You just do not lose the rest of the database to get them.
From a matched name to a tracked conversation
A target list is only worth having if you can work it. The investor CRM takes each name and moves it through eight stages, in order, so at any moment you can see how many conversations are genuinely live rather than how many emails you have sent.
- Target. The investor is on your matched list and you have not approached them yet. This is where a name lands when the three tests pass.
- Contact Initiated. You have reached out. The conversation exists from your side, and nothing has come back yet.
- Data Room Shared. You have granted this investor access to your data room. The access log then tells you whether they opened the deck, which is what usually decides if the name moves on.
- Active Engagement. A real conversation is running. Questions, meetings, follow-ups: the stage where most of the work of a raise actually happens.
- Term Sheet Received. Terms have been put to you in writing. The raise stops being a conversation and starts being a negotiation.
- Due Diligence. The investor is checking the numbers, the documents and the legal position before anything is final. A full data room and a finished checklist keep this stage short.
- Deal Agreed. The terms are settled with this investor, and what remains is completing rather than persuading.
- Funds Committed. The final stage, and the one that closes the loop back to the round you opened in Draft.
Why a pipeline beats a spreadsheet
A spreadsheet tells you who you have contacted. A pipeline tells you where each conversation has stopped, which is the more useful thing when a raise is not going as fast as you would like.
Names bunched at Contact Initiated and Data Room Shared are a different problem from names bunched at Active Engagement. The first is a targeting or an outreach problem. The second is usually a round problem, and worth taking back to your Investability Assessment.
Outbound and inbound are two different routes
The target list is the outbound route. You approach matched investors, share a data room with named recipients on grants that expire, and work the pipeline stage by stage.
A Showcase campaign is the inbound route. It is a public campaign, reviewed by Vanelo before it goes live, and it appears to verified investors in Deal Discovery. Verification matters here: an investor has to be verified before they can read full campaign detail, so your round is not simply published to the open internet.
Investors pay nothing to use Vanelo. Reviewed campaign content goes back for review when it is edited, so it is worth submitting a campaign you are finished with rather than one you are still moving around.
Where it sits in the raise
Open a round, score it with the Investability Assessment, and price it with the Valuation Engine. The investor database is the tool that turns all of that into a list of names, because stage, sector and ticket compatibility are all read from the round you have just built.
From there the raise runs on two tools together: the data room for what you share, and the pipeline for where each name has got to.
Build your target list
Create an account, open a round, and let the three tests cut 1,389 records down to the investors your round is actually compatible with. Cancel any time.
Create your accountThe Founder Plan is £25.99 a month, or £19.99 a month paid for the year. Questions first? Email hello@vanelo.io. PitchHub Ltd, Alpha Works, 21st Floor, Alpha Towers, Suffolk Street Queensway, Birmingham B1 1TT.