8 Free Tools to Get Better at Startup Investing

I want to preface this list of startup investing resources by saying that these should be supplemental to your research when investing. Each one helps give you an edge, but none of these alone will suffice when it comes to researching a risky startup investment. Alright, let’s get to it!

1. Patent Drop

• What is is: a free newsletter that highlights new patents being filed by large corporations. They explain the patent’s application in layman’s terms, and provide pretty comprehensive commentary around it’s potential

• How it helps: Investing in startups is all about placing bets on the future. Corporations plan years in advance, and they often telegraph their moves through the filing of patents. For example, Ford filed a patent for tech that controls odors more effectively in shared vehicles. This could signal to investors that Ford is betting on shared mobility to be a big part of the future. Understanding how big companies think about the future can be a unique insight that helps shape your startup investments

• Link to Subscribe

2. Google Trends

• What is is: a free tool to analyze search patterns of consumers

• How it helps: Analyzing future trends is a pivotal part of startup investing, and Google is one of the best indicators in this department due to its wide usage. I particularly like using its ‘compare’ feature to determine which company within a competitive set might have an edge. For example if I wanted to see which athletic apparel company had the edge in consumer demand, I could throw Nike + Adidas (I know, they’re not startups) into Google trends and see that Nike seems to hold a clear advantage over its competitor

• Link to Google Trends

3. SimilarWeb

• What is is: a free tool that let’s you analyze website traffic on an in-depth level

How it helps: For digital businesses, SimilarWeb provides a fairly comprehensive depiction of consumer interaction with the site. They have stats like Visitors, Avg Duration of Visitors, Bounce Rate, Country Splits, Avg Pages Visited, Age/Gender Demographics, and so much more. I would caution that these stats should probably be used directionally, but they’re a great starting point for evaluating online businesses.

• Link to SimilarWeb

4. Statista

• What is is: Home to thousands of charts that help you visualize data and spot trends that are happening over the years. What’s great is that this database is easily searchable, has a ton of charts/reports, and has a lot of forward looking projections integrated into their charts as well

• How it helps: Every startup out there includes the total size of the market they’re operating in. A skateboard startup might claim on their fundraising page “the US skateboarding market is $12B industry!!”. As with everything, fact check it - search for it in Statista. Here we can see that the market is only a $650M industry, and we also get to see the growth trend of the space.

• Link to Statista

6. The CrowdList

• What is is: a free weekly newsletter sent each Friday that shares every single new Reg CF offering that launched that week. They also extract 5 interesting startups that caught their eye

• How it helps: A hallmark of the equity crowdfunding industry is that investors can receive perks for investing. Most startups also issue an ‘early bird’ discount within the first few days of their campaign. The equity crowdfunding platforms typically don’t announce new startup investments until they hit certain milestones, so unless you’re actively searching each day, it’s easy to miss new raises and their early bird discounts. The CrowdList helps consolidate all raises across multiple platforms so that you can spot them early on.

• Link to The CrowdList

7. StartEngine Investing Facebook Group

• What is is: a free-to-join Facebook group that discusses equity crowdfunding investments! Don’t let the name fool you, this group discusses & invests across Republic and Wefunder too.

• How it helps: If you’re going to democratize startup investing, you might as well utilize the power of the crowd! Thinking of investing in a software that helps creators make content but don’t know enough about the space? Post in the Facebook group and see if any of the 3,700 members are creators themselves so that you can get their unique insights

• Link to Facebook Group

8. Exploding Topics

• What is is: a (you guessed it) free weekly newsletter that shares rapidly growing search trends that are worth exploring

• How it helps: This tool looks at search data and analyzes terms to see which ones are on the cusp of a breakout. It then consolidates its findings into an easy-to-read newsletter list. Take the below example, apparently there has been a spike in interest for ‘Resume Worded’, which appears to be an AI software that helps you write your resume!

• Link to Exploding Topics