How to find startup investors, in short: read the round's own announcement for the lead, then read a backer database for the names the announcement left out, and treat the 2 as 1 answer. Across the 6 rounds checked here, the announcements named 58 backers and NAUT's own record named 58, and 10 names on each side were missing from the other, so either source alone hands you about 85% of the list.
Data note. Every NAUT count here was read from NAUT's own database on 28 October 2026, read-only. The 7 rounds worked below are crypto rounds announced between 14 September and 15 October 2026 that carry a backer list in that database. 6 of them were checked against outside coverage, listed at the end, and 5 of those 6 against 2 pages the checker could read in full. The 7th, Jeeves' Series C, rests on NAUT's record alone, because the page that carried its announcement could not be confirmed line by line, so no outside figure for it is quoted here and it stays out of the announcement comparison. 1 further round from the same pull is left out entirely: NAUT's stored amount for it disagrees with the outside reports, which is a defect in the row rather than a finding. The US securities filing route was checked and dropped from the 5: a Form D filing could not be confirmed to name the investors themselves, so it does not belong on a list of ways to get names. NAUT Research wrote this, and the places where NAUT's own record loses to an announcement are left in rather than tidied away.
How to find startup investors: the 5 free routes
Run them in this order. The first 2 did the work in every one of the 7 rounds below; the last 3 are manual, and a script cannot stand in for you on any of them.
- The round's announcement. A press release, a newswire item or the report that carried it. It is the only free route that reliably says who led.
- The lead's own portfolio page. Once you have 1 name, that firm's site and its NAUT investor page give you the rounds it backed and the companies around it.
- A funding tracker. The aggregator pages that NAUT's own round rows cite as their source.
- X. The company's and the lead's own posts on the day of the round, which often name backers the release did not.
- LinkedIn. The company page and, signed in, the investors listed among its connections and board.
- Read the announcementIt is the only free route that names a lead. NAUT flags a lead on 239 of its 13,251 backer rows.
- Open the lead's pageCoinFund led Jeeves, Sequoia Capital led Mecka and Pantera Capital led Fission Labs.
- Cross a trackerEvery round in this pull cites cryptorank.io as its stored source URL.
- Search X on the round date10 of the 69 backer rows here are a person, so a firm-only list misses them.
- Check LinkedIn signed inThe public company page carries no funding data until you sign in.
1. The round's announcement, for the lead
Search the company name with the round size and the word that fits the stage, then take the earliest dated item you can find and prefer the company's own release over a report about it. Kaiko's own release puts the lead, the stage and the date in its headline: S&P Global leads the Series B extension, to a $110M total, on 14 September 2026. Fission Labs' newswire release does the same job, naming Pantera Capital as the lead on a $10M Series A.
This route is cheap and it is the one that answers the lead question, because a database usually will not. NAUT flags a lead on 239 of its 13,251 backer rows, which is 1.8%. On the 7 rounds here the flag is much better than that, 6 of 69 rows, and the 1 round with no flag at all, Spout Finance's strategic raise, is also the round whose outside reports name no lead either. So where a lead exists, somebody announced it.
What the announcement misses is the tail of the list, and the gap is not small. Read the 2 sides of Fission Labs' Series A: the release names Pantera Capital plus Circle, Borderless Capital, New Form Capital, Gumi Cryptos Capital and 1 angel. NAUT's row for the same round carries 8 names, adding Lattice, Reflexive Capital and Anthony Scaramucci, and leaving out the angel the release named.
2. The lead's own portfolio page, to work backwards
1 name is enough to start the reverse search. Open the lead's NAUT investor page and you get the other rounds it backed, which is how you find the firms that keep showing up beside it. NAUT holds 1,272 distinct investor firms and angels across 2,583 rounds, so most leads on a crypto round have a page with more than 1 deal on it.
Co-investors repeat inside this small sample already. Coinbase Ventures sits on both Jeeves' Series C and Kaiko's extended Series B, and Reflexive Capital is on both Fission Labs' Series A and Walapay's seed. Across 7 unrelated rounds, that is 2 firms seen twice out of 67 distinct backers, which is the kind of overlap a founder can use to ask who else a prospective lead usually brings in.
A portfolio page has 1 weakness worth knowing before you rely on it. It tells you a firm invested, and it rarely says in which round, at what size, or whether the firm led, so it builds a startup investor list well and a lead list badly.
3. A funding tracker, to cross-check
Every round in this pull stores cryptorank.io as the source URL on the NAUT round row, which is a fair measure of how much of the public record of crypto funding runs through trackers of that kind. Use one to catch a round you did not know closed, then read the announcement it points at.
Not tested here. A direct fetch of cryptorank.io returned HTTP 403 on 28 October 2026, so a script cannot read it, and nothing on the site was used as a source for this article. A human in a browser is a different case, and that case was not checked.
4. X, for the names nobody put in the release
Search the company handle and the round date together, then read the replies and quotes under the announcement post, because co-investors tend to announce themselves there when the release did not name them. The angels are the reason to bother: 10 of the 69 backer rows on these 7 rounds carry a person's name rather than a firm's, including Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal on Spout Finance, Stani Kulechov, Phil Potter and Henri Stern on Tare, and Anthony Scaramucci on Fission Labs.
Not tested here as a search. An X profile page served to a plain fetch on 28 October 2026 returned a shell carrying only the account bio, because the timeline itself is drawn in the browser, so this is a route you work by hand and no specific post is quoted in this article.
5. LinkedIn, signed in, last
The public company overview page loaded on 28 October 2026 and carried no funding or investor data at all. The part of LinkedIn that helps, the people search that surfaces board seats and investor titles, sits behind a sign-in. So treat it as a manual step at the end of the list, good for confirming that a person at the investing firm really sits on this company's board, and useless as a first pass. Not tested here beyond that single page load.
Which free route actually names the lead investor?
The announcement, and almost nothing else. The split is clean on these 7 rounds: 6 carry a lead in NAUT's record and each of those 6 leads was also in the outside coverage, while the 1 round with no lead in NAUT has none in the coverage either.
| Round | Amount | Lead |
|---|---|---|
 Jeeves Series C |
$110M |  CoinFund |
 Mecka Series B |
$60M |  Sequoia Capital |
 Kaiko Series B ext. |
$57M |  S&P Global |
 Tare Seed |
$13.25M |  Blockchain Capital |
| Fission Labs Series A | $10M |  Pantera Capital |
 Walapay Seed |
$4.6M |  Generative Ventures |
 Spout Finance Strategic |
$2M | None |
Each round's announcement date, as NAUT's own project pages show it, is with that company below, and the backer counts per round are in the chart further down. On 5 of the 6 checked rounds the outside coverage carries the same date. Only Walapay's seed differs, by 1 day, so a 1-day difference between a tracker and a release is normal and is not evidence of 2 rounds.
Kaiko's row shows the other thing to watch. NAUT stores $57M, the size of the extension; the company's own release describes the extension as taking the whole Series B to $110M, counting the $53M raised in 2022 with it. Both figures are right about different things, and a startup investor list built by copying headline numbers will double-count that round.
Who invested in these 7 startups, and who led each round?
Every name below is NAUT's own record of that round, read on 28 October 2026, with the lead first where a lead is flagged.
Jeeves, the stablecoin-native banking platform for companies with a global footprint, raised $110M in a Series C announced 2026-09-29. Founder and CEO: Dileep Thazhmon. Led by: CoinFund. Joined: Wintermute, FT Partners, AllianceBernstein, Coinbase Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), GIC, ParaFi Capital, Y Combinator, CRV and Vista Equity Partners.
Mecka, a data layer for AI robotics, raised $60M in a Series B announced 2026-10-07. Led by: Sequoia Capital. Joined: NVIDIA Venture Capital, Framework Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Neo, Qualcomm, Samsung and M12.
Kaiko, a crypto market data firm, raised $57M in an extended Series B announced 2026-09-14. Led by: S&P Global. Joined: Bpifrance, Canton Foundation, BNP Paribas, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Anthemis and Stellar, plus 1 further fund that the round row on Kaiko's page names and this list does not.
Tare, which rewires credit markets, raised $13.25M in a seed announced 2026-09-16. Led by: Blockchain Capital. Joined: Avalanche Foundation, Janus Henderson Investors, Neoclassic Capital, Strobe Ventures, Stani Kulechov, Phil Potter and Henri Stern.
Fission Labs, an on-chain venture capital platform, raised $10M in a Series A announced 2026-10-15. Led by: Pantera Capital. Joined: Lattice, Reflexive Capital, Anthony Scaramucci, Gumi Cryptos Capital, Circle, Borderless Capital and New Form Capital.
Walapay raised $4.6M in a seed announced 2026-10-02. Founders: Thomas Borgers and Dimitri Borgers. Led by: Generative Ventures. Joined: FGV Capital, NGC Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Verda Ventures, Contribution Capital, Reflexive Capital, Polygon and Jsquare.
Spout Finance raised $2M in a strategic round announced 2026-10-15, with no lead flagged. Founder: Marc Ryan. Backers: 2Square, Anchorage Digital, Solayer, Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko, Raj Gokal, Paul Taylor, Draper Dragon, Vessel Capital, Bering Waters, Taisu Ventures, Flow Traders, Anna Yuan, James Parillo and Eric Chen.
7 of those 69 rows are an operating company or a foundation rather than a fund, Stellar, Polygon, Solana Labs, Solayer, Anchorage Digital, Canton Foundation and Avalanche Foundation, and 10 are an individual. So a list of funds alone would miss 17 of the 69 names, which is about a quarter of the names these rounds made public.
How many funding round backers does a crypto round have?
Between 8 and 15 on these 7 rounds, and the count has little to do with the amount raised. The $2M round at the top of the chart names nearly twice as many backers as the $60M round at the bottom.
Those 7 rounds average 9.9 backers each, which is nearly twice NAUT's database-wide average of 5.1 backers per round that carries a list at all. Rounds with a full public list run deeper than the typical covered round, so do not read a count of 5 names as the whole cap table.
How to find startup investors when the announcement is thin
Compare the 2 sides and you can see exactly what each route costs you. For the 6 checked rounds, the outside announcements and reports named 58 backers between them and NAUT's own rows named 58, and the overlap is 48. So 10 of those names sit only in the announcements and 10 only in NAUT. Both columns below count backers: announced is the outside announcements and reports, in NAUT is NAUT's own row.
| Round | Announced | In NAUT |
|---|---|---|
| Kaiko |
14 | 9 |
| Walapay |
10 | 10 |
| Spout Finance |
10 | 15 |
| Tare |
9 | 8 |
| Mecka |
9 | 8 |
| Fission Labs | 6 | 8 |
| Total | 58 | 58 |
Read the names only 1 side carries as the price of stopping early. Kaiko's release named 5 more backers that NAUT's row does not carry, so there the announcement is the better list. Spout Finance's coverage missed 5 names that NAUT holds, 4 of them individuals, so there the database is. Walapay's round is the case that settles the argument: the 2 sources agree on 8 names, the reports add 2 that NAUT lacks, and NAUT adds Contribution Capital and Reflexive Capital, which the reports do not mention. Neither side is complete on its own.
1 more thing changes with the stage. On Mecka's Series B the release named both M12 and Microsoft's venture fund, which are the same investor under 2 names, and NAUT carries M12 once. Dedupe by the entity rather than by the string, or a corporate venture arm will look like 2 cheques.
What this tells a founder raising a round
- Find the lead first, then the syndicate. The lead is in the release; the other 7 to 14 names usually are not.
- Read a target fund's last 2 or 3 rounds before the call. Pantera Capital sat with 7 other backers on Fission Labs, and that is the group you are also pitching.
- Count the angels. 10 of the 69 names on these rounds are people, and an angel who already backed 1 company in your sector is the cheapest warm route into the fund beside them.
- Do not treat a thin list as a thin round. The $2M round here names 15 backers and the $60M round names 8.
- Pick the round that looks like yoursWalapay's $4.6M seed named 10 backers, Tare's $13.25M seed named 8.
- Read the lead's pageBlockchain Capital led Tare, Generative Ventures led Walapay.
- List the repeat co-investorsCoinbase Ventures is on 2 of these 7 rounds, Reflexive Capital on 2.
- Route through an angelStani Kulechov, Phil Potter and Henri Stern all backed Tare's seed.
What this tells a business development team
- A funded round is a buying signal with a date on it, and 90 of the 187 rounds NAUT recorded in the last 90 days carry a backer list you can read today.
- Sell to the backers as well as the company. 1,272 investor firms and angels sit across NAUT's 2,583 rounds with a list, and the firm that just wrote a cheque will take a call about its portfolio company.
- The founder is usually the only named person on a fresh round. NAUT names Dileep Thazhmon at Jeeves, Marc Ryan at Spout Finance, and Thomas Borgers and Dimitri Borgers at Walapay, and no person at all on 3 of these 7 rounds.
- Work the operating backers, not only the funds. Polygon, Stellar, Solana Labs and Anchorage Digital each invested here, and each one is a partnership conversation as well as a shareholder.
- Start at the recent rounds90 of 187 rounds in NAUT's last 90 days carry a backer list.
- Sort by cheque size$110M at Jeeves buys differently from $2M at Spout Finance.
- Take the named founder4 people are named across these 7 rounds, starting with Dileep Thazhmon.
- Ask the backer for the introCoinFund, Sequoia Capital and S&P Global led 3 of these rounds.
The paid shortcut: NAUT's backer lookup
The 5 free routes cost you between 20 minutes and an afternoon per company, and the afternoon goes on the manual 3. NAUT's RoundBacker lookup is the paid version of the same work, already done: open a project page and the round shows its backers, each one linking to that investor's own page, and each investor page shows the rounds it backed.
What it covers, measured on 28 October 2026: 2,583 of the 8,655 rounds in the database carry a verified backer list, which is 29.8%, and coverage on recent rounds is better at 90 of the last 187, or 48.1%. Behind those lists sit 13,251 backer rows and 1,272 distinct investor firms and angels, averaging 5.1 backers per covered round, across 6,915 live projects and the 2,841 companies that carry at least 1 round.
What it does not do is tell you who led. A lead flag sits on 239 of those 13,251 rows, 1.8%, and that is why this article puts the free announcement first and keeps it there. The honest division of labour: the release gives you the lead, the lookup gives you the rest of the names and every link out of them.
Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?
Yes. Every fund in this article is in NAUT's developer API as JSON, the same records the pages show. GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors?sort=portfolio&limit=100 returns the funds on NAUT ranked by portfolio size, 100 a page, each with its type, links and portfolio count, for 5 credits a call. A key with no credits gets clearly marked sample data, so you can build against it first. Plans start at $49 a month for 3,000 credits (pricing), and the API docs list every endpoint. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on NAUT unlock on any paid plan: start a 7-day trial.
How to find startup investors FAQ
How do you find out who invested in a startup?
Read the round's own announcement for the lead, then read a backer database for the names the announcement left out. On the 6 crypto rounds checked here, announced between 14 September and 15 October 2026, the announcements named 58 backers, NAUT named 58, and 10 names on each side were absent from the other.
Is there a free way to get a full startup investor list?
Partly. The announcement plus the lead's portfolio page gets most of the way free, and on these 6 rounds the announcement alone averaged 9.7 names per round, the same as NAUT, while missing 10 names across the 6. NAUT's own record covered 2,583 of 8,655 rounds on 28 October 2026, which is 29.8%.
Do SEC filings name a startup's investors?
This article leaves that route out. The recon behind it could not confirm that a Form D filing names the investors themselves rather than the issuer's own officers and directors, so no claim about it is made here either way.
Who led the biggest crypto rounds of this period?
CoinFund led Jeeves' $110M Series C announced 2026-09-29, Sequoia Capital led Mecka's $60M Series B announced 2026-10-07, and S&P Global led Kaiko's $57M extended Series B announced 2026-09-14.
How many funding round backers does a typical crypto round have?
5.1, averaged across the 2,583 rounds in NAUT that carry a backer list, read on 28 October 2026. The 7 rounds worked in this article average 9.9 each, between 8 at Mecka, Fission Labs and Tare and 15 at Spout Finance.
Can I get this data through an API?
Yes. NAUT's developer API at api.naut.so/v1 returns the data behind this article as JSON: GET /v1/investors?sort=portfolio&limit=100 returns the funds on NAUT ranked by portfolio size, 100 a page, each with its type, links and portfolio count. A call costs 5 credits, and a key with no credits returns marked sample data for free.
Sources
- NAUT's own database, read on 28 October 2026, read-only: the rounds, their backer rows and lead flags, the investor and project rows behind each backer, and the people each company names. Every NAUT count above was computed from those rows at that time.
- Kaiko's own release,
kaiko.com, dated 14 September 2026, and The Block's report of the same day,theblock.co. - Mecka's own release,
mecka.ai, dated 7 October 2026, and BetaKit's report,betakit.com. - Fission Labs' newswire release,
prnewswire.com, dated 15 October 2026, and FinTech Global's report,fintech.global, dated 16 October 2026. - Walapay's round: SiliconANGLE,
siliconangle.com, and the Business Wire release carried onmorningstar.com, both dated 1 October 2026. - Tare's round:
kucoin.comand Crypto Briefing,cryptobriefing.com, dated 16 September 2026. - Spout Finance's round: the Globe Newswire release,
globenewswire.com, dated 15 October 2026. A second page carrying the same round could not be read by the checker, so that round's figures here rest on the release and NAUT's own row. - Left untested, and not used as a source for anything above:
cryptorank.io, which answered HTTP 403 to a direct fetch on 28 October 2026;x.com, whose timelines are not readable by a plain fetch; andlinkedin.com, whose company page carried no investor data without a sign-in on 28 October 2026.