Mattermark
Plan
Mattermark's Series A deck from September 2014. A data platform that quantifies and tracks private companies so investors and salespeople can find and qualify them. The deck sought $5M to $7M.
Source: the founder's own final Series A deck on SlideShare. View the original deck →
Eval
This was a publicly shared document. We evaluated it exactly as presented in 2014, ignoring everything we now know happened since.
Verdict: Borderline (3.31 / 5). It sits a hair below our "Lean yes" line, which is the right place for it: a real business with real revenue, asking for real Series A money, on a story that leans hard on projections.
Estimated valuation (directional, 2014-era market): the $6.5M raised implies a post-money in the low tens of millions at period Series A dilution, which is where the round in fact landed. (Period anchor, not a 2026 median.)
Top fix: separate traction from projection. The deck shows real quarterly revenue and then a steep forecast (self-serve growing 33% a quarter, headcount from 9 to 40, revenue projected to $4.6M). The forecast is doing more persuasive work than the actuals.
Biggest risk: market scale in a crowded category. Sales and company intelligence already had well-funded incumbents, and the deck does not decisively show why this wins and keeps winning at venture scale.
Why it scored here. This is the most interesting kind of example, because it is genuinely close. The problem is real, the team is credible, the revenue is real, and the business model is clean. What pulls it under the line is the combination our rubric is built to catch: modest current traction relative to the size of the raise, carried by an aggressive projection, in a market whose ceiling is unclear. None of those is fatal alone. Together they make it a coin-flip rather than a clear yes.
Full scorecard (Series A weights)
| # | Dimension | Wt | Score | The one fix that moves this most |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Team & founder-market fit | 16% | 4 | Strong, visible founder and a real hiring plan. |
| 2 | Traction & evidence of demand | 28% | 3 | Real revenue, but modest for a $6.5M A and propped by projections. Show retention and net revenue retention. |
| 3 | Problem & urgency | 12% | 4 | Well stated and real for the buyer. |
| 4 | Market & timing | 15% | 3 | The crux. Crowded category; show why the ceiling is venture-scale, not a feature. |
| 5 | Solution & differentiation | 10% | 3 | Differentiation vs. incumbent data providers is not decisive. |
| 6 | Business model & unit economics | 13% | 3 | Subscription plus enterprise is clear; CAC, payback, and LTV are not shown. |
| 7 | Competition & defensibility | 3% | 3 | Name the durable moat, not just the current feature lead. |
| 8 | The ask & use of funds | 3% | 4 | Clear $5M to $7M, padded deliberately, tied to a hiring budget. |
| Overall | 100% | 3.31 |
Red-flag gates: none fired. "Uninvestable structure / capped scale" is flagged but not triggered, because the market ceiling is uncertain rather than provably low.
Market-scale flag: unclear, leaning capped. Good revenue can mask a market that tops out below venture-scale, and that is the open question here.
What actually happened
Mattermark did raise the round, roughly $6.5M, on the strength of that revenue and growth story. It could not sustain the trajectory the deck projected, struggled to raise again, and announced its sale to FullContact on December 21, 2017. The company as an independent venture ended there.
The honest reflection: this is a case where investors said yes and our model said coin-flip, and both readings have something to them. Someone wrote the check, so on the narrow question of "could this raise a Series A in 2014," the market was more generous than our 3.31. But the specific weakness the rubric leaned on, modest traction plus a crowded market with an unclear ceiling, is close to the reason the company did not endure. The lesson is the one our Market dimension exists to teach: a believable growth chart is not the same as a venture-scale market, and the difference is where outcomes like this are decided.
This is a directional estimate of how the document reads, not a valuation opinion or financial advice.