Many of today’s most profound advancements sprang from young companies supported by investors with early conviction and foresight. From transportation to housing, infrastructure to the arts,  healthcare to climate change, entrepreneurs have created the foundation for progress in all corners of human interest. However, while investors dedicate themselves to the study of markets, business models, and new technologies in search of the perfect investment thesis, the tools they use for sourcing the people and companies that will deliver on tomorrow’s ideas are still rudimentary — opportunities are sourced and equity capital is allocated primarily through referrals and personal networks. For something as meaningful and complex as ushering in new waves of life-changing progress, venture capital’s sourcing model is surprisingly analog. As a result, the set of ideas considered for funding is limited by arbitrary indicators: who you know, where you went to school, and where you live. 

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At Harmonic, we see public markets as inspiration for what a truly capital efficient venture environment can look like. Public markets are supported by an abundance of well-organized, real-time information on companies and their performance — all accessible for market participants to use to their advantage. This data abundance accelerates the rate at which investors get creative to find an edge, driving ever more efficient and productive capital allocation.

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We’re building Harmonic to bring the efficiency of public markets to the private sector, helping investors hone their theses – however complicated or creative – and get a real-time view of the companies that match them.  Like a Bloomberg Terminal for startups, Harmonic enables investors to deploy capital productively and strategically with fresh, comprehensive, accurate startup data and insights. Already, over 6 million startups and their teams are tracked in Harmonic’s engine, with new companies spawning in the platform as they’re formed.  They’re all discoverable with powerful search filters and tags that span firmographics, team composition, and changes over time. Investors can curate searches on Harmonic that help them explore even the most sophisticated and nuanced investment theses, then, without hundreds of hours of manual sourcing and research, discover opportunities that today may go undiscovered entirely.

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A highly navigable, transparent startup ecosystem is all the more valuable amid a time of record-breaking high volumes of dry powder and a rather slow funding environment as the market navigates this current downturn. There’s increased pressure on sourcing, especially given that some of the most valuable companies of our generation were built during recessions.

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Imagine being able to identify, say, climate-tech companies that were created in the last year with headcount growing at over 100%? And then narrow the results to find only those having that headcount growth from employees who previously spent multiple years at unicorn companies? Or Boston-based edtech companies that just hired a CFO and opened their first international office within the past six months? Our platform continuously synthesizes public data from all corners of the web to create a living, breathing, and highly searchable view of the entire startup ecosystem. Unlimited searches can be curated and saved, feeding fresh opportunities to customers wherever they work: their CRM, Slack, email, data warehouse, or the Harmonic console.

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Today, some of the most sophisticated technology investors are using Harmonic to discover new opportunities through data driven sourcing, including a16z, Floodgate, Accel, Playground, Bloomberg Beta, and more. We’ve also discovered new demands for our startup discovery platform: SaaS and enterprise business development teams. Harmonic enables teams like Brex, Vouch, Notion, and Carta to find startups at precisely the right time that they’d benefit from their products. Since our inception in 2020, more than 150 venture firms and SaaS sales teams are using Harmonic to automate startup discovery and sourcing. In the years to come, Harmonic's discovery tool aims to help not just capital find the right innovation, but also products, services, and talent.

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We’re fortunate to have some of the most respected investors supporting our mission. We’ve raised $30M to date from great partners including Craft Ventures, Sozo, Floodgate, and many more.  In fact, it was early conversations with leading investors that helped inspire the initial direction for Harmonic. In 2020, our co-founder Bryan worked with Floodgate to build a tool for surfacing compelling early-stage teams. Bryan, who was teaching at Stanford Law, saw a unique opportunity to use legal filings to identify promising emerging startups based on their founders’ backgrounds. The more we dug in, the more opportunity we saw in bringing together and drawing insights from fragmented startup data to meaningfully improve startup discovery and sourcing.  We realized the massive potential in building the process into a startup of our own that could offer these same superpowers to investors broadly.

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Fast forward to today: we’re building Harmonic not just to catalyze investment efficiency within private markets, but to level the starting line for entrepreneurs everywhere. When companies are discoverable based on objective, searchable qualities—like their growth rate, industry vertical, or team composition— investors end up with a much broader pool of companies to choose from, and more innovators get the fuel they need to drive their idea forward. Ultimately, more quality entrepreneurship coming from more places means faster progress across all corners of society.

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Interested in trying out Harmonic? Get in touch: hello@harmonic.ai.

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Read more about our Series A announcement on TechCrunch.