We launched Prelo in August 2021, the journey to date has been challenging but exciting. Ask any founder bootstrapping and they’ll tell you how hectic it is when you have to wear multiple hats in a Startup 🤹‍♀️

I personally did a lot of growing up in the last 3 months. Interesting story (to be shared soon) but we launched Prelo days after our previous Startup failed and I have to say, the journey was completely unchartered. 😥

We had our first paying customer in September, grew revenue to x3 in October and we’ve grown further by 25% between October and November. All thanks to our customers who believed in us and our journey. 🙏

Before we get into this month’s blog, I’d love to connect with you!

Soooo, let’s do it follow me on twitter (DMs always open) 📨

💡 7 key questions our customers asked us

After we launched Prelo, our next milestone was to find as many distribution channels as we could, so we put our product out to as many channels as we could and got back over 100 questions 👀 .

We’ve picked the most frequently asked questions and shared them below to help you make a quick decision as to whether or not Prelo is the right tool for your Startup.

We are adding new product features every day, so expect some of the answers we share here to change as we build out Prelo’s capabilities.

1️⃣ What data do I get with Prelo?

So let’s cut to the chase, in terms of the data we hold on Prelo here’s what you’ll get: company data, key decision makers and complimentary aggregated data to help you determine the growth trajectory of every company.

Company Data 🏢

Company Name, Website URL, Social Media Links, Email and Telephone, HQ Location, Employee Size Total Funded Amount, Last Funded Amount, Last funded date, Current Funding Stage, Associated Industries

Key Decision Makers 👩‍🦱

First Name, Surname, Email Address (Unverified) , Job Title, Company Name, Social Media Link

Complimentary Aggregated Data 🔢

Growth Signals – Are they growing, are they fundraising soon, when did they last make a hire

Hiring Data – Did they hire 6 months ago, are they hiring now, what sort of roles did they hire for

Funding Predictions – Are they fundraising soon?

2️⃣ What countries will I find on Prelo?

We collect data from all over the world. Whilst majority of our data comes from the U.S. , Canada and Europe, we also cover Middle East, Asia and Latin America, Russian Federation.

We are working on bringing data from Africa, please stay tuned as we review the data we have for Africa.

To configure countries on Prelo, simply go to the Settings Section and add a Country or add a (Country and City)

Update : We’re now bringing in data from Africa

3️⃣ How often does Prelo refresh its data?

You can certainly refresh or add more data to your dashboard simply by interacting with the 💰 Funding News section on Prelo (see image below). You can interact with the 💰 Funding News section by answering questions that show up on your timeline and choosing Startups with similar attributes to the ones you would typically be interested.

Once you start engaging with your timeline, we’ll save the types of companies you are interacting with and share more of those Startups with you. We try to refresh the data you see every day, and we load completely new data every month. We load anything from 600 – 2,500 new companies every month.

Here’s an example of the breakdown we do for each industry on a monthly bases

600 Startups in Health Tech just added

Here are some quick insights 💡

1️⃣ 130 / 600 raised $2B – last month 💸

2️⃣ 528 / 600 average raised ~ $25MM – last 3 months 📈

3️⃣ 184 / 600 have 1 – 10 employees 💼

We share a monthly breakdown of our data uploads in our private Slack channel. Once you become a paid subscriber, you’ll be automatically invited to join the channel. Every month, we’ll share something like this with you.

https://airtable.com/shrErBCEayYdlNLDd/tbll0tzsLsYYjuIjX

Note: The 💰 Funding News Section was previously called the 📣 Activities section

4️⃣ Does Prelo integrate with a CRM?

We have not integrated Prelo with a CRM just yet but we are working on this. We’re sorry about this, but our focus with Prelo right now, is for our customers to be able to download their data and import it into any CRM of their choice.

Update: We’ve now integrated Prelo with Close we’ve partnered with Close and you can now send your leads directly to Close with just one-click

5️⃣ Can I shortlist my data by Category ?

Absolutely 100% YES. You cannot only shortlist by category you can also save up to 4 different shortlists!
We have just recently launched a feature to help you save search criteria.

Right now you can’t save this across multiple profiles, but you can save your searches for your active location and/or industry setting.

We’ve shared an image, where we have 3 saved searches

1. Series A (11 – 50) Employees

2. Seed (11 – 50) Employees

3. Series A (Marketing)

These are funding stage searches by company size, location and/or Industry. I’ve also written a blog recently to help explain exactly what each of the funding stages mean please refer to the blog here

6️⃣ Why is the download limit low ?

Yes we know the limits are low, but we’re not interested in sending you tons of junk, we are crunching a lot of data to bring you really curated information and make sure your outreach to these Startups will be worth your while.

Whilst you may be able to download 40 Startups per week, you will have access to as much as 1000 Startups in your dashboard all you need to do is change industry settings, location or head over to funding news. We deliver new Startups to you regularly, and your list is cumulative.

When you access the 💰 Funding News section as discussed above, the interaction you have with the funded Startups that appear in your timeline will help to populate your dashboard with Startups. The process happens dynamically.

Also, it’s worth noting that we are building a data repository of how you use Prelo so that we can dynamically suggest similar companies to you through AI/ML (machine learning).

When you click on the button more companies like these or when you’re asked a question like “would you like to see more Startups in health-tech” you need to engage with such questions. 💡

It is also important to let you know about our data sources. We gather data across several websites, funding platforms and many more. In terms of the data we provide to our customers, we’ll share social media contacts, funding updates, analytics on hiring and broad predictions on next funding dates for all the tech companies on our database. We’re still MVP, and we continue to improve the platform

7️⃣ What’s the vision for Prelo?

We exist to help entrepreneurs “do targeted marketing” themselves. No need for a marketing agency. We provide growth indicators to guide our customers on where to focus their outreach efforts.

Our vision is to grow Prelo into a marketplace for entrepreneurs, product makers, service providers and investors. Some of the data we plan to bring into Prelo will include company Burn Rate, Acquisition News, High Profile Hires, Partnership Updates and many more.

On twitter : 🐤 @oluadedj
subscribe : 📰 prelo newsletter

Until the next time!

Olu
Founder, Prelo
I tweet about helping founders win!