First Harmonic

Harmonic provides a data platform designed as a discovery engine for venture capital investors to find, analyze, and track startups. The company's engine continuously scans public information, including legal filings, to build a searchable knowledge base on startups, their founders, products, and financials.

The company was initially a side project started by Ajay Sohmshetty and Bryan Casey. Casey, who was working at a venture fund and had a legal background from Stanford, identified a gap in utilizing legal filings as a data source for new startups. He and Sohmshetty, then a machine learning software engineer at Google, began building Harmonic as a startup discovery platform. Max Ruderman, a former software engineer at Google, joined as COO and is now the CEO, leading the company after the founders moved on to new projects.

Harmonic operates on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, primarily serving venture capital firms. Revenue is generated through tiered subscriptions that provide access to its web platform and Chrome extension. An enterprise plan allows for data exports, and the company also offers API access for customers to integrate Harmonic's data into their own systems, such as CRMs and deal flow pipelines. This model provides predictable, recurring revenue by selling software access rather than just raw data.

Keywords: startup discovery, venture capital data, investment sourcing, deal flow management, startup database, founder tracking, firmographics, investor tools, data-driven investing, legal filings data, API data access, SaaS, financial technology, venture intelligence, market intelligence, emerging companies, company information, private company data, investment analysis, tech startups