Find recently funded companies to sell to

The right rounds to look for depend on what you sell and how much it costs. A funding round is useful as a prospecting signal only when it matches the size and stage of company that buys from you.

Kite uses your pricing, your current customers, and your positioning to choose the rounds worth searching for:

• Round type. A product priced for small teams points to pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds. A product built for larger companies points to Series B and later.
• Round size. Two Series A rounds can differ by tens of millions of dollars. Kite can set a minimum or maximum round amount so the list matches the budget your product needs.
• Timing. A window of 30 to 90 days catches companies while they're still hiring and choosing tools. Kite proposes a window and you can change it.
• Market. Industry, headquarters location, and company size narrow the search to the companies you can actually serve.

Kite also pays attention to what kind of round it is. A company that raised a Series A last year and took out a loan last month is still a Series A company, so Kite treats the stage as the company's latest equity round, not the latest money that came in.

Kite finds funded companies through several built-in sources, so you can start without a separate subscription. Each one catches rounds the others can miss.

The first is a company search across firmographic and funding data. Kite filters it on the date of the last fundraise, the type of the last round, the amount raised, total funding to date, and the investors involved, alongside industry, location, and headcount. This gives Kite a structured list of companies whose most recent round falls inside your window.

The second is company news. Kite searches for funding announcements across the web and gets back each announcement with its date and a link to the source. This search returns announcements of any age, so Kite reads the date on every one and drops rounds older than about three months. Those companies have usually already made the decisions the round set off.

If your team already pays for Crunchbase, you can connect it and Kite will search it too. That lets Kite work from the same funding records your team trusts and compare them with its own sources. When a round shows up in the news before it reaches a database, Kite includes it and notes where it came from.

A funding round is a reason to contact a company. It isn't a reason to want that company as a customer, so Kite checks fit before anything else.

Kite reads each company's description and website against your positioning to confirm the company actually has the problem you solve. Two companies in the same industry category can be very different businesses, and the description is usually where that shows. Kite then removes your current customers, your competitors, and anyone your team has asked it to skip, and confirms the company is still operating.

Next, Kite looks at what each company is hiring for. A round tells you the company has money. Its open roles and recent headcount growth tell you which teams the money is going to. Say you sell an onboarding tool for sales teams. A Series A company that has posted four sales roles since its announcement is about to need what you sell. A company that raised the same round and is hiring only engineers can wait.

When you sell to marketers, agencies, or growth teams, Kite can add one more check: whether each company has started running ads, and on which platforms. A newly funded company that just turned on paid campaigns is investing in growth right now.

The right contact at a funded company is the person whose team the money is going to. At a ten-person seed company, that's usually a founder. At a company that raised a larger round to build out sales, it's more likely the head of sales who's about to hire a dozen people.

Kite finds these people by title, function, and seniority, then confirms each one still holds the role at that company. Funded companies hire quickly, so titles change often, and an out-of-date contact is a wasted email. Each person comes with their current title, LinkedIn profile, and a professional email when one is available, along with the email's verification status so you know which addresses are safe to send to.

Kite scores every contact from one to five against your criteria and explains each score in a line. On longer lists, it splits the contacts into a primary group and a secondary group so you know where to start.

The round is what earns your email a reading, so Kite builds each message around it. Every company on the list keeps three details: what the round was, when it was announced, and a link to the source. Kite pairs that with what it learned about the company's plans, such as the roles it's hiring for or the launch it mentioned in the announcement.

That combination is what separates a useful email from a congratulations note. "Congrats on the raise" could go to any funded company. "Congrats on the Series A in September. With four sales roles open, you're probably building your first onboarding process" could only go to this company, this month.

Kite shows you the drafts first. Approve them, and Kite sends the emails from your team's Kite address or a connected email product, then reports which were delivered, which failed, and who replied. For channels Kite doesn't send through, such as LinkedIn messages or a warm introduction from an investor you share, it drafts a short note for each contact so someone on your team can send it. With a CRM connected, Kite adds the companies and contacts there, records the round as the reason each one was added, and updates accounts you already track instead of duplicating them.

New rounds are announced every day, so a list of funded companies is most useful when it's rebuilt on a schedule. Ask Kite to run the search every Monday, and it looks for rounds announced since the last run, skips companies it has already handled, and delivers the new batch with contacts and drafts ready.

Kite can also check the accounts you already have. A deal that went quiet six months ago has a new reason to restart when that company raises, so Kite flags the accounts in your pipeline that turn up in its funding search and drafts a follow-up that mentions the news.