👋Hey Sahil here! Welcome to this bi-weekly venture curator newsletter. Each week, I tackle questions about building products, startups, growth, and venture capital! In today’s newsletter, we -
Deep Dive: 35+ Investor Databases for Easier VC Outreach (Free Access).
Quick Dive:
Reddit Marketing for B2B SaaS Founders: A Step-by-Step Guide.
Writing a Cold Email That Gets VC Funding - Advice from Leading VCs.
Product Discovery Framework By YC Backed Startup Founder.
Major News: ElevenLabs raised $250M at $3 Billion valuation, Humanity's last exam, OpenAI’s Stargate project doesn’t have the money it needs & More
For AI enthusiasts: Must-have resources to stay updated on AI tools and trends, trusted by MIT students and tech professionals from OpenAI and NVIDIA.
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📜 TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
35+ Investor Databases for Easier VC Outreach (Free Access)
This one’s a little different. Normally, we break down topics and share insights, but today we’re giving you something bigger: a massive database of investors. Some of these lists we found online, others we painstakingly curated with the Venture Curator team. We’ve double-checked everything to make sure it’s accurate, and we hope it makes your fundraising journey easier.
Before diving in, feel free to check out our previous fundraising tips on the Archive Page.
Here’s what’s inside each database:
Investor/VC Name
Portfolio Companies
Stage & Sector Focus
LinkedIn & Twitter Links
Email Contacts (for selected database)
Here we go: The Ultimate Investor Databases for Free
2700+ US Angel Investors & VC Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link) Link to Access
I hope this will be useful in your fundraising journey. You can also check out our previous writeup on fundraising in our archive page.
📃 QUICK DIVES
1. Reddit Marketing for B2B SaaS Founders: A Step-by-Step Guide
If you’re a B2B SaaS founder and not leveraging Reddit, you’re leaving leads on the table.
I recently came across reddit marketing guide by Adam Shaw so thought to share with you some key points and my opinion with you. He shared - “Reddit is the #2 source of leads, right after LinkedIn. It’s where people are actively asking for help and exploring new solutions—unlike LinkedIn, which is more about storytelling and sharing success.
And here’s the kicker: 50% of my leads come from just answering questions on Reddit for less than an hour a day.”
Here’s how you can do it
Step 1: Turn Your Profile into a Landing Page
Your Reddit profile is like a mini landing page. It’s the first place curious users will go after reading your comments or posts. Make sure it’s optimized to convert.
How to set it up:
Choose a username that’s tied to your brand or product.
Write an actionable profile name (e.g., “Helping SaaS Founders Scale”).
Add a CTA to your profile banner (e.g., “Download our Free SaaS Marketing Guide”).
Include your one-line product pitch and CTA in the bio (e.g., “We help SaaS founders grow faster. Subscribe to our newsletter below!”).
Add links to key resources like:
Lead magnets
Newsletter sign-ups
Product demo
Step 2: Find Subreddits Where Your Audience Hangs Out
Reddit is vast, but your audience is likely concentrated in a handful of niche subreddits.
How to find them:
Use Reddit’s search bar to look for your product keywords (e.g., “SaaS,” “startup growth,” etc.).
Use Google to search for “your keywords + Reddit” (pro tip: Google is better at finding Reddit threads than Reddit itself).
Pick subreddits with active, engaged members in your niche.
Pro tip: Use tools like Gummy Search to automate finding relevant subreddits and posts.
Step 3: Prepare a Lead Magnet
Redditors hate being sold to. They love value first approaches.
That’s where a lead magnet comes in. It’s a way to engage your audience without coming across as too salesy.'
Examples of great lead magnets:
In-depth guides tailored to specific problems.
Free trials of your product.
Newsletters with actionable advice (my favorite).
Make it easy for people to commit. For example, I use a newsletter landing page to capture leads. By the time they get there, I’ve already built trust through helpful comments.
Step 4: Start by Commenting, Not Posting
Engage first, post later.
Why? Comments are more personal and allow you to directly connect with people asking for help. You’ll also learn what your audience really needs.
How to comment like a pro:
Answer recent posts (24-48 hours old) for better visibility.
Avoid crowded posts (0-10 comments is the sweet spot).
Add value. Most comments are generic—stand out by being actionable, specific, and helpful.
Step 5: Be the Best Commenter
The secret to success on Reddit? Write better comments than everyone else.
Here’s how:
Be highly relevant—answer only what’s asked.
Be specific—don’t just say “try this.” Explain how to try it.
Go in-depth—assume the person has zero knowledge.
Stay friendly—ignore trolls.
Make your comment stand out visually too:
Use white space for readability.
Add bullet points to organize your thoughts.
Be longer than most comments (Reddit loves thoughtful responses).
Step 6: Post to Curate Conversations
Once you’ve spent a few weeks commenting, you’ll notice patterns in what your audience talks about. That’s when you start posting.
But don’t make the mistake of being self-serving. Redditors can smell that a mile away.
Here’s what works:
Don’t post a blog or self-promo content. Instead, ask questions that spark engagement.
Let the audience share their thoughts and experiences in the comments.
Use their responses to build conversations and authority naturally.
Reddit can be a goldmine for B2B SaaS founders if used the right way. Focus on engagement first, provide value, and let the leads come to you.
2. Writing a Cold Email That Gets VC Funding - Advice from Leading VCs
Recently, Brett Adcock, the founder of Figure Robot, shared a tweet in which he listed several reasons why he believes cold emails work better than referrals.
Outbound cold email scales several orders of magnitude better than referrals - you can find 99.9% of anybody’s email.
Raising capital is a shots-on-goal game; you want to maximize top-of-funnel pitches. Optimizing your fundraising for referrals will put you at a local maximum.
It’s a challenge finding somebody who will stick their neck out to refer you. People rarely want to use their political capital referring you to a *highly important person* in their network, therefore at best you’re left with lousy double opt-in email.
Although I completely agree with these points, many founders struggle with writing cold emails to investors. Some founders even question whether investors open cold emails. Here's what investors said:
Keith Rabois prefers a deck, and he reads most of them.
Aileen Lee or her partners read every email pitch that comes into Cowboy Ventures.
David Sacks of Craft prefers a short email pitch that summarizes the opportunity.
Satya Patel of Homebrew reads everything sent to him
Jason (Founder of SaaStrfund) said - “I do get behind on email, but I love an amazing cold email and have funded maybe ~50% of my investments from them. I like an email pitch that is so amazing that I’d fund it just based on the email alone. “
So yes, is a perfect warm intro better? Yes. But even the top, most famous Seed VCs are hunting. Hunting unicorns and decacorns. And they can’t wait for them all to come from their networks.
Here’s the email from two startups to which Jason gave million-dollar funding…
So put together the very, very best cold email you can. Make it awesome in every way. And send it to your top VCs. At least seed and probably Series A VCs, too.
They may not respond. But if it’s awesome, including the title, I bet they open it. And if it’s super awesome, you have a better chance than you might think of getting a meeting.
3. Product Discovery Framework By YC Backed Startup Founder
Since then, he’s founded a YC-backed startup that makes it incredibly simple and easy to send transactional emails and sequences for any company, with a revenue growth chart that looks like this:
Here’s the framework:
Pick a customer you enjoy talking to
Talk to 15 of them to be sure you do (and can get in touch with them)
Ask them to tell you a problem that’s more important than an 8 on a scale of 1-10
If that problem is generalizable, make the smallest MVP you can (no code required, if possible)
Ask the 15 people if they’d pay for what you built, or would pay if you prioritized a certain feature they ask for
Repeat, with 50 new people. If the feature requests you’re getting are too varied, you may be solving the wrong problem.
Super practical and simple, but true! If you can’t find people to pay for your product, you likely don’t have a product that can turn into a business. Click into the thread to read it in full.
🗞️ THIS WEEK’S NEWS RECAP
Major News In VC, Startup Funding & Tech
OpenAI's Stargate project, backed by SoftBank and MGX, aims to invest $100B–$500B in U.S. data centers but has yet to securefull funding or a comprehensive plan.
Apple reports iOS 18 is now installed on 68% of compatible devices, climbing to 78% on iPhones released in the past four years.
International researchers have created a benchmark named "Humanity's Last Exam" to evaluate the limitations of large language models, where even the most advanced AI systems currently fail 90% of the time.
DeepSeek's AI Assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, became the top-rated free app on Apple’s U.S. App Store, overtaking ChatGPT just weeks after its January 10 release, according to Sensor Tower.
Elon Musk acknowledged that X's financial performance is weak, with the company barely breaking even and experiencing stagnant user growth and underwhelming revenue.
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Amazing list! Thanks!
Thanks Sahil