How to Find Founders

The People page lets you explore and filter profiles for founders, angel investors, and executives. Filters include:

1. Navigate to People in Dealroom's left menu
2. Use the filter bar to add criteria — for example: Last Founded Company Year Min = 2022, or Location = Germany, or Industry = Healthtech
3. Toggle AND / OR logic to refine or broaden your results
4. Use keyword or semantic search in the filter bar to find people by role, background, or specific terms in their bio
5. Click Export to download results as CSV or Excel (Premium)

Some ready-to-explore searches on the People page:

• Founders with PhDs — pre-built search for science-led founders
• Recently active founders — filter by Last Founded Company Year to find who's just started something new
• Angel investor activity — use the Activity dropdown to track active angels writing cheques in a specific sector or region

Dealroom classifies founders into three strength categories, based on their company's traction and background signals. Use these as quick filters to prioritise your search:

Each person also has a People Signal Score (1–100) — Dealroom's prediction of their founder success likelihood. It's built from three components:

• Track Record — funding raised and company scale, measured on a logarithmic scale
• Promising Signals — for lower-scoring founders: experience at top-tier companies, elite education, management background, or optimal age range (35–50 primary)
• Staleness Penalty — reduces scores when someone's most recent venture launched 3+ years ago without strong results

Founder Factories (also known as startup mafias) are organisations — often high-growth companies, unicorns, or specific universities — whose alumni disproportionately go on to found successful startups. Tracking these networks helps you identify the next generation of founders before they become famous.

1. Go to your Dealroom dashboard
2. Click Founder Factories in the left navigation
3. Browse suggested founders based on your configured interests
4. Visit any company profile to explore its associated alumni network and see who else has founded from that organisation

In the People tab, apply the Work History filter to find founders who previously worked at specific companies or unicorns. For example:

• Ex-Klarna employees who founded new companies in 2023+
• Founders with experience at FAANG companies in the AI space
• Alumni of top Y Combinator or Rocket Internet companies

Then click "Save to Alerts" to be notified when new matches appear.

Once your People search or Founder Factory filter is set, click "Save to Alerts". Name the search and you'll receive in-app notifications whenever a new person matching your criteria is added to Dealroom. This is how you stay ahead — the alert does the monitoring for you.

Dealroom provides access to 400,000+ business email addresses — covering founders, investors, and CEOs. These are directly accessible from person profiles, enabling outreach without needing to hunt for contact details elsewhere. Available on eligible plans.