How Investors Find Growing Startups with Crunchbase

For investors, finding promising startups isn’t about scanning headlines or relying on inbound decks — it’s about knowing where to look and how to filter for signals that point to growth. With thousands of companies emerging across markets and sectors, the real challenge is turning a broad universe into a focused, actionable shortlist and to spot opportunities before momentum becomes obvious to everyone else.

With Crunchbase, you can find startups predicted to raise funding, grow, get acquired, or IPO. These predictive signals make it possible to move from reactive research — looking at what has already happened to a company — to proactive discovery based on what’s likely to happen next.

By combining these predictions with AI-powered search, industry and geographic filters, and automated tracking, Crunchbase helps you invest in startups that are showing promising signs of momentum. 

Instantly Surface the Companies That Matter

Rather than starting with a blank search or an overwhelming dataset, you can use Crunchbase to instantly spot high-growth companies that match your criteria.

Let’s say you’re an investment analyst at a venture fund focused on Latin America, with a specific interest in fintech companies that are showing signs of growth or preparing to raise capital.

You can begin by filtering your Crunchbase search by geography and industry, such as Latin America and fintech. From there, you can apply predictive signals to surface startups that are predicted to raise funding or grow. This way, you’re prioritizing companies that are exhibiting patterns associated with near-term momentum, even if they haven’t announced a recent round. Crunchbase’s predictive intelligence for investors is a key advantage over traditional databases, which rely on past funding events rather than forward-looking signals. 

You can also surface companies with underlying activity that often precedes major inflection points. Product launches, partnership announcements, awards, and key team changes all appear alongside predictive data, helping you quickly understand which companies are actively progressing versus those that are relatively static.

Once you personalize this view in Crunchbase, it stays saved and continuously updates – so that you’re always returning to a refreshed snapshot of the market that reflects your investment thesis. Learn more about how to source growing startups in this video.

Automate Your Startup Sourcing with AI

Another way to quickly find growing startups to invest in is with Crunchbase’s AI companion, Scout.

Scout allows you to search using plain language across hundreds of Crunchbase filters. Instead of constructing complex queries manually, you can simply describe what you’re looking for. For example, you might ask Scout to find up-and-coming startups in Latin America that are strongly predicted to grow over the next six months.

Scout scans millions of companies and returns an initial result set. From there, you can continue refining the list through follow-up questions. You might ask Scout to focus only on companies that have raised more than $10 million in total funding, have at least 50 employees, and operate specifically in the financial services or fintech space. And, you can enrich your list even more granularly with data about those companies’ lead investors, revenue range, and more.

With each refinement, the list becomes more targeted. What begins as a long list of companies quickly turns into a shortlist that reflects both historical performance and forward-looking predictions — aligned tightly with your investment criteria.

Monitor Your Targets Real-Time

Once your search reflects your investment goals, Crunchbase allows you to save it so you never have to rebuild it again.

Crunchbase will notify you daily via email about major events within your target universe. That might include funding events, meaningful changes among startups you’re tracking, and crucially, any new companies that meet your criteria. By surfacing these new additions instantly, you’re able to beat other investors or funds to the market and be the first to reach out about investment or partnership opportunities.

Curious what Crunchbase can do for you? Learn more about Crunchbase for investors.

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