Understanding clusters

The four lenses

• Revenue tier - groups companies by how much they earn, from near-zero to top performers.
• Growth pattern - groups by how revenue is moving over time.
• Business model - groups by how the product makes money.
• Acquisition profile - groups by how attractive or ready a company is as an acquisition target.

The same startup can appear under different lenses. A company might sit in a mid revenue tier, a fast growth pattern, and an attractive acquisition profile all at once - each lens answers a different question.

Why four lenses instead of one

A single grouping would force one question onto every decision, and different decisions need different cuts of the same data. If you are planning a build, growth pattern and business model matter most. If you are shopping for an acquisition, revenue tier and acquisition profile carry the weight. The four lenses exist so the 26 clusters can serve all of those jobs from one dataset.

Reading a cluster

Open a cluster to see the startups inside it and what they have in common. Because the clusters are generated from the verified dataset, the grouping reflects real behavior rather than tags someone applied by hand.

How to use clusters in practice

1. 1

   Pick the lens for your question

   Choose revenue tier or acquisition profile for buy-side questions, growth pattern or business model for build-side ones.

2. 2

   Open a matching cluster

   Find the cluster that describes the behavior you want to study or replicate.

3. 3

   Read the shared traits

   Note what the member startups have in common - that shared pattern is the reusable lesson.

4. 4

   Cross-check the members

   Open a few individual profiles in startup search to confirm the pattern holds company by company.