/vc-finder

name: vc-finder
description: 'Takes a startup product URL or description, detects the industry and funding stage, identifies 5 comparable funded companies, searches who invested in those companies (Track A), finds VCs who publish investment theses about this space (Track B), and returns a ranked sourced list of relevant investors with deep-dives and outreach hooks. Use when asked to find investors for a startup, identify which VCs fund products like mine, research who backs companies in my space, build a VC target list, or find investor-market fit.'
compatibility: [claude-code, gemini-cli, github-copilot]

VC Finder

Take a product URL or description. Detect industry and stage. Find 5 comparable funded companies. Run two research tracks: who invested in those comparables (Track A), and which VCs publish theses about this space (Track B). Return a sourced, ranked investor list with outreach hooks.

---

**Zero-hallucination policy:** Every fact in the output must be traceable to a specific Tavily search result or the fetched product page. This applies to:

• Comparable company names: must appear in Tavily search results, not AI training knowledge
• VC fund names: must appear verbatim in Tavily search results
• Check sizes, stage focus, portfolio companies: must come from search snippets, not AI knowledge
• Fund overviews and thesis summaries: extracted from search snippets only. If a detail is not in the search data, write "not found in search data" -- do not fill from training knowledge.

---

Common Mistakes

| The agent will want to... | Why that's wrong | |---|---| | Add a16z or Sequoia because they are famous | A famous VC without evidence is noise. Only include VCs that appear in Tavily search results for this specific product. Name-dropping wastes the founder's time. | | Generate comparable companies from training knowledge | Comparables must come from Tavily search results (Step 6). AI knowledge of companies is not evidence -- a company suggested from memory may have wrong funding status or may not be a true comparable. | | Continue when all 5 Track A searches return 0 results | Zero Track A results means the comparables were wrong or too obscure. Stop, re-run Step 6 with broader search queries, and retry. | | Include a Track B VC without citing the article or post | Thesis without a source is indistinguishable from hallucination. The founder cannot verify it and the list loses all credibility. | | Fill in fund overview from training knowledge | Fund overviews must come from Tavily snippet text only. If the snippets don't describe the fund, write "not found in search data". | | Detect stage from website aesthetics | Stage must come from the specific CTA signals detected in Step 4. | | Write generic outreach hooks | Every outreach hook must name this specific product's differentiator and a specific VC portfolio signal or thesis quote from the search data. | | Skip the URL fetch when the user also provides a description | Always fetch the URL. The live page often reveals stage signals that the user's description omits. |

---

Step 1: Setup Check

echo "TAVILY_API_KEY:    ${TAVILY_API_KEY:+set}"
echo "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY: ${FIRECRAWL_API_KEY:-not set, Tavily extract will be used as fallback}"

**If TAVILY_API_KEY is missing:** Stop. Tell the user: "TAVILY_API_KEY is required to research VC investments and theses. There is no fallback for this. Get it at app.tavily.com -- free tier: 1000 credits/month (about 125 full runs). Add it to your .env file."

**If only FIRECRAWL_API_KEY is missing:** Continue silently. Tavily extract will be used for the URL fetch.

---

Step 2: Gather Input

You need:

• Product URL (required, unless user pastes a product description directly)
• Optional: target stage hint (pre-seed, seed, series-a, series-b) -- if provided, use it and skip stage detection
• Optional: geography preference (US, Europe, global) -- defaults to US if not specified

**If the user provides only a pasted description (no URL):** Skip Steps 3-4. Go directly to Step 5 with the pasted text as `product_content`. Set `stage_source` to `user_description`.

**If neither URL nor description is provided:** Ask: "What is the URL of your product or startup? Or paste a short description: what it does, who it is for, and what stage you are at (pre-seed, seed, Series A)."

Derive product slug from URL for the output filename:

PRODUCT_SLUG=$(python3 -c "
from urllib.parse import urlparse
url = 'URL_HERE'
host = urlparse(url).netloc.replace('www.', '')
print(host.split('.')[0])
")

---

Step 3: Fetch Product Page

**Primary: Firecrawl (if FIRECRAWL_API_KEY is set)**

curl -s -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v1/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "URL_HERE", "formats": ["markdown"], "onlyMainContent": true}' \
  | python3 -c "
import sys, json
d = json.load(sys.stdin)
content = d.get('data', {}).get('markdown', '') or d.get('markdown', '')
print(f'Fetched: {len(content)} characters')
open('/tmp/vc-product-raw.md', 'w').write(content)
"

**Fallback: Tavily extract (if FIRECRAWL_API_KEY is not set)**

curl -s -X POST https://api.tavily.com/extract \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"api_key\": \"$TAVILY_API_KEY\", \"urls\": [\"URL_HERE\"]}" \
  | python3 -c "
import sys, json
d = json.load(sys.stdin)
content = d.get('results', [{}])[0].get('raw_content', '')
print(f'Fetched via Tavily extract: {len(content)} characters')
open('/tmp/vc-product-raw.md', 'w').write(content)
"

**Step-level checkpoint:**

python3 -c "
content = open('/tmp/vc-product-raw.md').read()
if len(content) < 200:
    print('ERROR: Page returned fewer than 200 characters.')
else:
    print(f'Content OK: {len(content)} characters')
"

**If content < 200 characters:** Stop fetching. Tell the user: "The product page returned no readable content. This usually means