Mattermark

Mattermark​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Review: A Data-Driven Way of Startup Scouting If you’re a venture capitalist, work in corporate development, or are a B2B salesperson, you’re somewhat acquainted with the frustration that comes from the invisible "unicorn." By the time a company makes it to the headlines of a big tech magazine with its huge funding round, the best deals often have gone, and the same goes for the most lucrative sales partnerships. Recently, I got obsessed with a tool called Mattermark . It is supposed to be a great solution to the problem by converting the wild startup ecosystem into an organized and accessible database. People often refer to it as a "Bloomberg Terminal for private companies." After weeks of killing targets with high-growth companies on Mattermark, I am going to unveil if this platform really gives the "data edge" it tantalizingly advertises. What is Mattermark? Mattermark is a data tool that measures the growth of millions of private companies. A website like LinkedIn would tell you the place of work of a person, and Crunchbase would tell you the companies who have raised funds. Mattermark is focused on telling you how fast those companies are really growing.

It harvests data from a wide array of sources—social media signals, website traffic, changes in employee count, news mentions—and packs them all into one single proprietary metric: the Mattermark Mindshare Score . The Features That Change the Game

1. The Mattermark Mindshare Score This is the platform’s core. Revenue figures alone are not enough, especially if these are private companies that rarely disclose them. Therefore, Mattermark complements them with digital "footprints." If a company's site visits are going through the roof, their Twitter account followers massively increasing, and press chops are on the rise every couple of days, then their Mindshare Score escalates. It is a leading indicator of success that quite often comes before a formal announcement of fundraising.
2. Power Lead Prospecting and Filtering The search facility is very detailed. You aren’t doing a simple search for "Fintech in New York." You can do a search for "Fintech companies in New York with 10–50 employees that have at least 20% month-over-month growth in web traffic and have raised a Seed round." For a sales team, this is being able to turn a cold list into a prioritized "hot" list.
3. Portfolio Monitoring If you’re a manager or an investor, you can do an upload of a company list to be tracked. Mattermark will then send you automated notifications whenever one of your companies experiences a significant change—like a sudden drop in employee headcount (a red flag) or a surge in mobile app downloads (a green flag).
4. Browser Extension for Instant Context The Mattermark extension is a great way of saving your time. On visiting a company's website, you can simply hit the extension button to go through their funding history, estimated number of employees, and growth trends without actually leaving the page. It’s great for qualifying a lead in seconds." The Pros: Why the Data Wins Finding Hidden Potential: Good point of the platform is that in the case of companies that do not raise funds very often but massively grow their organic traction, it is capable of identifying them. Objective Metric: It is a great tool to take the "hype" out of the pitch. Things might be great with a founder who is very good at PR, but if Mattermark's data shows that their web traffic is flatlining and employees are leaving, then the data speaks a different language. Seamless CRM Integration: Your discoveries can be directly synced to Salesforce or HubSpot which is great for sales ops teams who have to deal with data cleanliness. The "Growth" View: Many platforms allow you to see a snapshot of the past. Mattermark, however, provides you with a trend line, which is way more beneficial for predicting what will happen.

The Cons: What to Watch Out For Cost of Accuracy: Mattermark caters mostly to the premium clientele and its pricing reflects that. Professional investors and enterprise sales teams can afford it. But if you are a solo founder running your startup on a shoestring budget, then the cost of the subscription might be a go signal. Data Latency: Just like any other platform, they are not perfect and are very fast. Sometimes a company can change its name or completely change its direction and automated scrapers take a little time to find out and get it updated in the database. Heavy Reliance on "Digital": Mattermark is excellent for SaaS, e-commerce, and consumer tech, that’s why it's brilliant for those verticals. But for "deep tech" or industrial companies that don't rely on web traffic or social media for growth, the Mindshare Score may not be a very good indicator of their actual value.

Mattermark vs. Crunchbase Crunchbase: Great at revealing the "Who" and "How Much." It's the definitive reference point for funding information and historic data. Mattermark: "How Fast" is the main focus. Mattermark is more of a roll-the-dynamic-growth-tracking tool, less of a static-directory look-up. So if Crunchbase is a library, Mattermark is a dashboard.

Final Verdict: The Scout’s Best Friend If it’s through finding and negotiating with high-growth companies that your success depends on, then you cannot afford to ignore Mattermark in your tech stack. It substitutes an unexplainable "gut feeling" with a data-driven "Growth Score" which enables the identification of startups that are about to make it big—almost with surgical accuracy. It is an instrument of the hunter rather than the gatherer. Should you want to cease being a mere reactor to events and instead become the one predicting them, this is the platform you must go ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌for.