01Why funding is the signal everyone uses
When a company raises a round, two things change at once. It has money it's expected to spend, and it has growth numbers it told investors it would reach. The weeks after the announcement are when it hires, buys tools and picks agencies.
That also makes funding the most crowded signal there is. Every seller with a news alert writes the same congratulations on the same morning. You don't win by finding the news. You win by arriving early with something specific to say.
02Five places the news shows up
| Where | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| The founder's own post on LinkedIn or X | The news in their words, often first, plus what they plan to do with the money | You have to be following the right people, or searching |
| Funding newsletters and trade press | A reporter's summary: amount, investors, what the company does | Everyone else reads the same story |
| Crunchbase | The round on the company's organization page, with earlier rounds for context | How much you see depends on your Crunchbase plan |
| The investor's announcements | A firm announcing its newest investments, sorted by the kind of company it backs | Only covers that firm's portfolio |
| The careers page | New roles, which often follow a round and show where the money is going | A sign of a round, not proof of one |
The founder's post is the one to prize. It's the only source that tells you what the company intends to do next, and that sentence is your opening.
03A weekly routine that takes half an hour
- Pick ten investors that fund the kind of company you sell to, and follow them on LinkedIn or X.
- Subscribe to one or two newsletters that cover funding in your market. More than that and you'll skim.
- Twice a week, read them with one question in mind: could I help this company in the next ninety days?
- For each yes, save the post or the article and note the reason in a few words.
- On Friday, write to the three best. Three specific messages beat thirty copies of the same one.
04What to write
Congratulations alone is noise, because it's what the other forty messages say. Connect the round to the problem that comes next, and make it short.
Congratulations on the Series A. You mentioned doubling the sales team by spring. New reps usually need [what you provide] in their first month, and that's what we do. Would it help to see how another team handled it?
The line that does the work is the second one. It shows you read past the headline.
05Mistakes that waste the signal
- Writing a generic note on the day of the announcement. That's when the inbox is fullest.
- Reading the size of the round as the size of your deal. A company can raise a lot and still buy carefully.
- Chasing every round. A seed-stage startup and a late-stage company need different things, and you probably only serve one of them.
- Waiting two months. By then the first hires are made and the first vendors are chosen.
06Where Save This Lead fits
Save This Lead is a Chrome extension that adds a Save button to the sites where this news appears. You can save the founder's post, the news article or the Crunchbase page, and each becomes a company record with the link and your reason attached. On Radar then holds a status and a follow-up date for it.
It won't find the round for you. There's no background monitoring and no alert when you're away: it saves what you're looking at. It also doesn't provide verified email addresses.