gtmskills.com

Reference file

Financial

financial.md

Instructions

Don't run this for routine outreach — the Company brief is enough. Use this only when the financial angle is the lever.

Step 1 — What you already have

Cheap first:

  1. swan-search-companies — Swan's model may already have funding totals, last round, investors.
  2. If a CRM is connected, search the CRM for the company — annual revenue and employee count are often in custom fields.
  3. swan-get-memory for the company — prior briefs may have logged financial context.

If a recent prior brief covers this, use it. Don't redo work.

Step 2 — Business events (funding history)

swan-fetch-business-events filtered to the company domain, event type funding, no time limit. Returns the full known fundraising history with amounts, dates, lead investors.

For each round, capture: stage + amount + date + lead investor. Most recent round matters most — that's their current runway and current valuation pressure.

Step 3 — Firmographic enrichment

swan-enrich-company if Step 1 didn't have enough. Returns employee count, employee growth, industry, year founded. Skip if you already have the data — enrichment costs credits.

Step 4 — Public revenue indicators

Private companies don't publish revenue. Public signals to infer from:

  • Headcount × industry avg revenue/employee — rough ARR estimate. For SaaS, $200K–$400K per FTE is typical at scale.
  • Employee growth rate — swan-enrich-company returns 6m/12m growth. Fast growth → recent revenue traction.
  • Funding stage vs age — a 10-year-old seed-stage company is different from a 2-year-old Series B.
  • Press / earnings — swan-fetch-scraped-url on Google for "<company>" revenue OR ARR OR "growth rate". Founders and execs sometimes drop numbers in press or podcasts.

Run web search only for 1–2 highest-value targets. Skip for the rest.

Step 5 — Ownership and structure

If the company is part of a larger entity (PE portfolio, subsidiary, public parent), that changes the buying motion entirely. Check:

  • swan-fetch-scraped-url on the company's "about" / press section for parent mentions
  • Funding rounds led by PE firms (Vista, Thoma Bravo, KKR, etc. — almost always means PE-portfolio)
  • Recent acquisition events via swan-fetch-business-events

If PE-backed, note this prominently. The economic buyer may sit at the portfolio level.

Step 6 — Runway / pressure signals

Combine the above into a runway and pressure read:

  • Last raise + amount → rough runway at current burn (12–24 months typical)
  • Headcount growth → spending into growth or holding tight?
  • Recent layoffs via swan-fetch-business-events
  • PE ownership stage → newer hold = invest mode, older hold = exit-prep mode

Three signals are enough to triangulate. Don't try to model their P&L.

Step 7 — Position the angle

Tie the financial context back to the outreach. Common angles:

Financial state Likely buying motivation
Recent large round Investing in growth — capacity tools, headcount-enabling software
Late-stage / pre-IPO Efficiency, predictability, reporting maturity
PE-backed early hold Top-line growth at scale
PE-backed late hold Margin expansion, exit prep
Public / earnings pressure Quarterly visibility, churn defense, efficiency
Recent layoffs Do more with less, consolidation candidates

Pick the one most relevant to the org's value prop.

Step 8 — Compose the brief

<Company> — Financial context

CURRENT STAGE
  - <stage, total raised, last round date, lead investor>

GROWTH POSTURE
  - <one line: investing / holding / contracting, with evidence>

OWNERSHIP
  - <independent / PE-backed / public / subsidiary, with detail>

PRESSURE
  - <one line — what they're being measured on right now>

OUTREACH ANGLE
  - <one sentence connecting financial state to value prop>

End with confidence: high / medium / low based on signal density.

Step 9 — Update the company model

swan-update-company to log: total raised, last round, growth posture, ownership type. Future briefs reuse this.

Rules

  • MUST cite a source for every financial claim. Inferred revenue must be labeled "est."
  • NEVER state a revenue or ARR figure as fact for a private company unless it's from press or earnings.
  • NEVER blow credits on web search for low-priority targets — pick the 1–2 worth deep digging.
  • If the company is bootstrapped with no public footprint, note that and stop. There's no financial story to tell.
  • If a tool result is truncated, read the file from files/tool-outputs/<toolName>_<callId>.json in swan-execute-code.