PARTNERSHIP
San Francisco (global founders program)
2023
250+ startups funded
Early-stage AI, consumer & B2B startups
As of July, 2026, more than 50 speedrun-backed founders have used Metal to run their raise, many carrying pipeline and investor intelligence with them well past their 12-week cohort.
The Challenge
What speedrun founders were struggling with
Speedrun isn't short on fundraising infrastructure. The program already gives founders an in-person Demo Day, an online platform reaching 1,000+ early-stage investors, alumni intel on specific investors, and live coaching through high-stakes negotiations. Few accelerators arrive with that much built in. But speedrun runs on velocity — a 12-week sprint from acceptance to Demo Day, with founders shipping product, finding early customers, and building a company at a pace few other programs demand. That same velocity becomes a liability the moment outreach turns into a live raise: even with access to a curated 1,000-investor platform, founders still have to work out, investor by investor, who actually leads at their stage, what check size and valuation range to expect, and which firms have conviction in their specific category — research that doesn't move at speedrun pace on its own.
Missing Investor Intelligence
What stages does this investor specialize in?
What valuations do they invest at?
Which investors are investing in the same direction as a given Company’s business model?
Which investors have invested in direct competitors?
What are the “most likely” lead investors for specific types of rounds?
A Fast-Moving, Fast-Changing Cohort
Speedrun's own roster has shifted dramatically cohort over cohort, from a gaming-heavy program at launch to one now dominated by AI and B2B. Founders in any given cohort are often building in categories that didn't exist as a distinct thesis area a year earlier, which makes matching them to investors with real, current conviction in that space harder than it looks from a static list.
Global Founders, Uneven Network Visibility
With founders joining from dozens of countries through the Global Founders Program, speedrun's community is genuinely international, but that also means founders vary widely in how well-mapped their own networks are to the U.S. investor landscape, leaving many without a clear view of who around them could open a door to a specific fund.
Introducing Metal
The fundraising operating system for founders
With Metal’s AI-native operating system for fundraising, YC founders are able to bring together economic and relationship intelligence with workflow automation. Specifically, founders are able to use various sub-products within Metal to bring efficiency and precision to their raise process.
Investor Discovery, Research & Qualification
With AI-driven search, granular filters, and thesis mapping, Metal helps speedrun founders discover investors that are the "most likely" partners for their raise — matching the pace of a 12-week program instead of slowing it down. Each investor profile includes data on stage concentration, sector focus, lead behaviour, follow-on patterns, and similar investments.
Relationship Intelligence
For founders building a global network from scratch, Metal surfaces which of their connections — including speedrun mentors, alumni, and operators — can make an introduction to, or offer intelligence on, a given investor.
Pipeline Management and Round Coach
Metal centralizes every investor interaction into a single structured, visual pipeline, so founders can track progress from "Identified" to "Seeking Intro" across their target list — and keep that structure running long after Demo Day and the 12-week program end.
AI Round Analyst
Metal's in-app agent, Richard AI, acts as a round analyst — answering questions on valuations, investor fit, and call transcripts with the empirical precision founders need to move through a raise at the same speed they moved through the program.
The Speedrun Outcome
Fundraising at speedrun pace
Speedrun's own founders describe the program in the language of velocity, shipping fast, iterating fast, learning fast.
That same instinct doesn't naturally carry over into fundraising, where the default pace is slow: weeks of research per investor, manual tracking, and outreach that stalls the moment a founder's attention returns to product.
Today, Metal is the recommended fundraising platform across the YC community (with a growing number of YC companies using Metal to power their venture rounds).
