PARTNERSHIP
x
Global Presence
2005
5,000+ startups funded
Early-stage startups
As of April, 2026, more than 100 YC-backed founders have become paying customers for Metal. Many of these founders have used Metal consistently before, in-between and beyond rounds to keep a close pulse on the venture ecosystem.
The Challenge
What YC founders were struggling with
YC has developed a world-class internal system for founders raising capital at and around Demo Day. As an accelerator, YC's primary focus is on identifying the top founders and capitalizing portfolio companies around Demo Day. Beyond that, while YC partners remain accessible and supportive, their goal is not to provide a best-in-class software product for founders raising venture rounds.
As a result, YC founders raising Series A or Seed extension rounds struggle with identifying the “most likely” investment firms for their specific Company. Additionally, founders lack the empirical intelligence that is required of investment firms that they decide to pursue. In the absence of the right data and intelligence platform, founders struggle to access the basic insights that they need on investors
Missing Investor Intelligence
What stages does this investor specialize in?
What valuations do they invest at?
Which investors are investing in the same direction as a given Company’s business model?
Which investors have invested in direct competitors?
What are the “most likely” lead investors for specific types of rounds?
Proprietary Intelligence Gap
Additionally, in today's hypercompetitive venture market, founders need proprietary intelligence on investment firms to know what to expect, to decode investor calls, and to manage the raise process.
Network Mapping Challenge
Finally, while YC founders have strong networks, there is no way for them to know who their friends have raised from, or how their networks map into a given investment firm. As a result, founders end up having to spend many hours just trying to build access.
Introducing Metal
The fundraising operating system for founders
With Metal’s AI-native operating system for fundraising, YC founders are able to bring together economic and relationship intelligence with workflow automation. Specifically, founders are able to use various sub-products within Metal to bring efficiency and precision to their raise process.
Investor Discovery, Research & Qualification
With AI-driven search, granular filters and thesis mapping, Metal helps founders discover investors that are the "most likely" partners for a given raise. In addition, with rich insights on investors, founders are able to conduct critical research to prepare well for investor calls.
Each investor profile includes data on stage concentration, sector focus, lead behaviour, follow-on patterns, and similar investments. This eliminates guesswork and ensures founders focus on investors that have historically invested in similar investing theses.
Relationship Intelligence
Across the industry, founders generally underestimate the value and the power of their own networks. With Metal’s relationship intelligence capabilities, the platform surfaces information that helps founders identify their most important connections, specifically for introductions with or intelligence around a given set of investors.
In particular, by adding data integrations and by loading entire pipelines of investors into the platform, founders are able to identify which of their connections are able to connect them with which investors on their pipeline.
Pipeline Management and Round Coach
Metal centralizes every investor interaction into a structured, visual pipeline. Founders can track progress from “Identified” to “Seeking Intro”, organising their raise into a structured pipeline that consolidates investor research, relationship intelligence and historical communications in one place.
Additionally, Metal’s in-app agent codenamed Richard AI provides proprietary intelligence on investors that isn’t accessible elsewhere. With Richard AI, founders are able to increase their “fundraising IQ” and access proprietary insights into specific investors that may not be accessible via other platforms.
AI Round Analyst
Metal's in-app agent, codenamed Richard AI, served as a round analyst, bringing deep empirical precision to everyday questions, such as valuations, investor fit assessments and analysing call transcripts to provide actionable feedback. With the round analyst, founders are able to increase their "fundraising IQ" and access to empirical insights, bringing stronger confidence throughout the process.
The YC Outcome
Word of mouth growth within the YC community
With 100+ YC founders as paying customers, Metal has grown within the YC community primarily via word of mouth.
Founders use Metal, find immense value in the workflow automation and intelligence capabilities, and end up telling their friends about it within the YC community.
Today, Metal is the recommended fundraising platform across the YC community (with a growing number of YC companies using Metal to power their venture rounds).
