Finding High-Growth Startups

Discover startups and uncover hidden opportunities.

03/10/25

5 min

Overview

Identifying fast-growing and “trending” startups is essential for venture capitalists looking for promising investment opportunities aligned with their fund’s thesis.

With PDL’s Company Search API and Company Enrichment API endpoints, you can filter and rank startups based on key attributes and important growth signals like industry, locations, headcount, employee growth rate and recent funding activity.

This recipe illustrates an easy way to quickly target high-potential startups that align with your target industries and markets.

Data Ingredients

• PDL Products
  • Company Dataset
  • Company Search API
  • Company Enrichment API
• Key Fields
  • industry
  • location
  • employee_count
  • founded
  • tags
  • employee_growth_rate

Directions

Step 1: Define your target industries and markets
Identify the industries or geographic regions of interest (e.g., AI startups, European markets).

Step 2: Search for high-growth companies
Use the Company Search endpoint to filter companies based on recent growth indicators like funding rounds, employee growth, or founding date. Include specific tags or industries in your search query.

Step 3: (Optional) Extract high-signal data points
From each returned company record, extract the key attributes like employee_count, founded, funding_rounds, and employee_growth_rate.

Step 4: Rank companies by "trendiness"
Aggregate signals like employee growth rate, recent funding activity, and industry momentum. Create a scoring system to rank startups based on their relative or absolute growth.

Step 5: Integrate rankings into your investment strategy
Incorporate the ranks and scores of these startups into your investment strategy by aligning them with your fund’s thesis and objectives. Highlight high-ranking startups with standout growth metrics or strategic alignment for deeper evaluation and potential outreach.

Chef's Recommendations

👨‍🍳 Chef’s Recommendation

For the most accurate trend analysis, consider combining growth metrics from PDL data with additional signals such as high-profile hires (e.g. former employees from top tech companies).

💡 Alternate Approach

Instead of focusing purely on growth signals, enrich data for startups experiencing talent influx. Analyze high-profile hires alongside funding rounds and industry-specific tags to calculate a “talent momentum” score as part of your trend analysis.

Discover startups and uncover hidden opportunities. Recipe | People Data Labs