The Deal Lead Guide
Build an asset around your taste and trust, one deal at a time.
Your job is to find, diligence, and stand behind the right companies. The platform handles everything else.
The real constraints in early-stage capital aren't money or deal flow. They're taste and trust. Who's credible enough to curate? Who do investors follow when the deal is unfamiliar and the risk is real? Your judgment is the asset. Every deal you bring builds it.
Your conviction
Before anything else, decide what's worth putting your name on.
Know exactly why you're bringing this deal
Your investors are buying your read on an investment opportunity. Three questions to think about:
- Is this in my lane of expertise? Is this a good deal and one that fits the thesis you want to be known for. Your track record as a curator is built deal by deal. Every company you back either deepens it or muddies it.
- Can I speak to it confidently? When a skeptical investor asks hard questions, you'll want to be ready with answers.
- How well do I know the founder? Familiarity isn't the same as a relationship. Your investors are trusting your read on people, too.
Validate your conviction before you launch
Get to $30K in soft commitments first. Talk to the five people who know your judgment best. When they say yes, your thesis gets stress-tested.
Those early commits also change what everyone after them sees. A page with visible momentum is a completely different experience than seeing a deal page with no activity, and it gives your deal a great early interest signal.
Making your expertise legible
Make your read legible to investors.
Write your investor POV for the deal page
Expert judgment is trapped in personal networks, and your investor POV is how it gets out and gets the exposure it deserves. This is your real read on the company, in your own voice, carrying your credibility with it.
The POVs that convert best tend to do a few things well:
- Lead with what actually grabbed you. The one thing that made you do a double take: a technical edge, a defensible piece of IP, a category unlock no one else has cracked.
- Name the differentiation precisely. Be specific about the moat, the unit economics, or the insight others are missing.
- Tie it to why now. The strongest POVs connect the company to a shift in the market that makes this the moment, not someday.
- Make the founder case personal. Why this team, for this problem. If you've watched them operate, say so. That's a trust signal your investors will be looking for.
- Back it with proof. A retention figure, a growth rate, a piece of customer demand you've seen firsthand and can speak to.
What a strong POV sounds like
Anonymized · real deal leadsFive excerpts, one per move above. Short, specific, in their own voice.
- Lead with what grabbed you
“The supply gap in their market is severe and growing, and their core technology enables a one-step conversion that attacks the exact bottleneck no competitor has solved yet.”
Co-head, angel collective - Name the differentiation
“Highly defensible technology, backed by a real IP portfolio, with a credible path to a cost-competitive product. That combination is rare this early.”
Managing partner, regional fund - Tie it to why now
“The timing is what makes this urgent. As global supply chains face more volatility, the need for a decentralized alternative has moved from someday to right now.”
Sector-focused syndicate lead - Make the founder case personal
“Early-stage investing is about identifying talent, and this team had the product vision, the market knowledge, and the conviction to drive real change. We're watching it play out now.”
GP, early-stage fund - Back it with proof
“A very short payback period that only improves with the new market they've unlocked: 10,000+ customers to date, a national media partnership, and expansion across all 50 states.”
Managing director, consumer fund
Two to three sharp paragraphs is plenty. If you already have a full deal memo, we can use that, but your personal POV is what travels furthest.
Interview the founder (or pass it to us)
Every deal page includes snippets of a founder pitch and interview. Deal Leads typically lead this call since they know the founder best, and know exactly what to ask to make the deal shine.
You also have the option of asking our team to record this content with the founder instead. However it gets recorded, a great interview covers a Founder Pitch, covering their story and getting to know them, and high-level diligence questions:
Let the audience meet them
Founding story, personal context, why they're the one building this. Before your investors weigh the deal, they want to know the person.
Your diligence, made visible
Open with two or three questions only someone in your lane would think to raise.
Examples of questions to ask on the call
- Who exactly is the customer, and how do they buy?
- What does the sales cycle really look like, and where does competition come from?
- How defensible is the IP or data advantage, and what are the unit economics today?
Then close with the questions every investor wants answered: what are the biggest risks they're managing, what does a strong outcome look like from here, and what are some realistic exit paths.
Review the page before it goes live
You know what your investors need to hear. Before launch, make sure the page covers:
- Why now. A specific market shift, regulatory change, or contract timing.
- All credible backers. A strong lead is one of the highest-converting signals on a page.
- Visible traction. Revenue, retention, growth rate, waitlist.
- The team, framed right. Why this specific founder for this specific problem.
Building your capital base
Launching and bringing investors in.
Launch in tiers
Start with your pre-commits. Give them first access. Some deal leads offer a small carry incentive for early movers, which is entirely your call. What matters is that this wave creates visible momentum for everyone who sees the deal next.
Then expand. Every angel group, every community, every individual who you think would be a good fit for this deal. Help the founder work their networks too.
Set a close date and hold it
We recommend a window of 6 to 8 weeks for keeping the deal page open. That way, you can communicate a close date in your first outreach so people know it's real. Investors decide faster when the window is firm.
Try not to extend it, but obviously we always can if you want to. Running a clean, disciplined process is part of your reputation as a deal lead.
Wrapping up
Take stock of what you built.
The last call
In the final 2–5 days, we run a last-call campaign to everyone who clicked but hasn't committed. We handle the writing and the sending, so you're never the one chasing people down.
If you think someone's on the fence, a quick personal note from you usually does more than any campaign we could run. A short check-in from someone they already trust goes a long way.
Recognize what you've built
Your job was to find this deal, do the work, and stand behind it publicly. The platform handled investor communication, allocation, and close. You spent your time doing what only you can do.
After close, those investors are part of a capital base that builds around your track record. Your investors are now following the pattern of what you find, how you think, and who you back. Every deal you bring makes that taste and judgement more legible and more valuable.
What to share publicly
What you can and can't share as a deal lead.
Play Money deals run under Reg D Rule 506(b), which prohibits general solicitation while a raise is active. The rule is broader than most people expect: building public interest in an investable company is enough to trigger it, even without mentioning the raise.
You can post publicly
- Your syndicate, thesis, investing philosophy
- General content about the sector or market
- A founder snippet, high-level, no deal reference, founder consents
- Any deal that has fully closed
You cannot post publicly
- That a specific company is actively raising
- Deal terms, raise amounts, or links to a deal page
- Anything naming a founder that could build investment interest
- CTAs pointing toward an active offering
Channel rule
LinkedIn, public social, public Slack → syndicate promotion only. Email, DM, private communities → where active deal opportunities live. When in doubt, check with us before you post.