Pond
Fundraising, GTM, and bounties for startups
470 followers
Fundraising, GTM, and bounties for startups
470 followers
Pond is the market infrastructure for the new startup economy. Verified founders raise capital, acquire customers, and access 20,000+ contributors in one place. · Markets: Stripe-verified metrics + Vault-protected funding. One startup raised $150K in 3 minutes. · Bounties: 10,000+ submissions, $36K+ distributed. Ethereum Foundation, GPTZero, PhotoBase. · AI Growth Agent: CRM, pipeline, and GTM on autopilot. 400+ startups · 154 countries · Archetype & Coinbase Ventures.
Pond
@thinksdylan congrats on the launch! will you guys be operating in the US?
Pond
@aronlium Yes, we want to support global startups!
The description is a bit confusing) Am I understanding correctly that your platform can provide users for testing?
I have a travel AI, and right now we're trying to run a blind comparison test of our responses against other models. We can prepare the response dataset ourselves, but finding test participants across different countries is still an unsolved problem. Is that something you can help with?
Pond
Mailwarm
How does the verification work for founders, I want to know what gets checked and how often is it refreshed?
Pond
@thamibenjelloun Great question.
For founders, verification starts with real business traction. Today, we focus on signals like revenue, MRR, user growth, and connected data sources such as Stripe or GA where available.
The goal is to help investors look beyond pitch decks and evaluate startups based on actual performance. We’re also working toward making these metrics refresh regularly so founder profiles stay up to date as the company grows.
Feel free to check out Pond and send over any feedback.
Dirac
Will filtering for better products on Pond be important? Bc if there is such a volume of low-quality of products/startups, it might dilute the 10000+ people who want to help, right?
Congrats on the Launch, Dylan!!
Pond
@peterz_shu Peter, I cannot appreciate you more! Yes I think we try not to do that as a platform because we believe everyone has a chance to be great. So many successful people were rejected and underperforming the time when they started their business. We think it still applies. We are trying to be a place where we can lift everyone up with us. People will shine and stand out eventually. Our job is to empower every startup. Every founder.
Nice concept. Do the bounties help close enterprise deals or are they more about early traction?
Pond
Pond
@dhiraj_patel5 We’ve recently supported bounties that helped companies close deals more efficiently and create a stronger sense of urgency among prospective customers.
For example, one startup posted a bounty with us and delegated the community to conduct competitive analysis and research on their target accounts. The goal was to identify whether those prospects were already using services similar to the startup’s offering.
The startup also asked community members to share their findings publicly on social media. For instance, if the community discovered that a prospect’s competitors were already using a particular service, they would post about it and tag the prospect. A typical post might say:
“Based on our recent research, we found that [Company A] is using this service, and it has helped them improve key metrics by X%.”
The startup then used these research findings to strengthen its sales outreach. Their sales team could approach prospects with a message like:
“Someone recently highlighted that your competitor is using a solution similar to ours, and reports suggest it has improved their efficiency by X%. Our platform delivers even better results. Would you be interested in exploring how we can help you outperform your competitors in this area?”
Build Check
Great combo Dylan! Got it the fundraising side, but what about GTM? Do you help to get first early adopters??
Pond
Humalike
Nice work shipping this! What made you decide to build this now?
Pond