Discover Startups vs The Venture Codex

Discover Startups is a vetted directory and matchmaking platform for early-stage, product-based founders. Its free Directory gives startups a profile, visibility to investors, media, buyers and partners, and watchlist notifications. Investors, journalists, retail buyers and brand partners can search using filters such as stage, sector and location, then contact founders directly through their inbox without per-introduction fees. Submissions are reviewed to check that a startup is real, its founder can be reached and its data is honest; revenue and stage are not acceptance gates. The paid Matchmaker plan adds AI-powered matching across press, retail, investor and event opportunities, with curated options founders can pursue or pass on. Founders can edit profiles, pause matching for audiences and add audiences they want to reach. Matchmaker also includes a founder-only WhatsApp community, events and webinars. It is an invite-only beta: applications are reviewed by hand, invitations arrive in small batches, and billing starts only after an invitation. Matchmaker costs £49.99 a month once invited. Service businesses are not accepted.

The Venture Codex is a web-based venture capital intelligence platform that brings funding rounds, investor profiles, fund data, and company information into one searchable service. Users can search and filter companies, investors, funds, and funding rounds. The platform describes public company comparables for benchmarking valuations and growth metrics, AI-matched investor recommendations based on stage, sector, and check size, and competitor intelligence for finding similar companies and following market and funding-round changes. It identifies founders and analysts needing searchable venture-market data as its intended users. The Free access plan costs nothing and currently carries no access charge. Listed plan capabilities include company profiles, funding data, founder profiles, and advanced search. The terms grant a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license for internal research and analysis. They prohibit automated scraping, using content to train AI or machine-learning models, and redistributing data. Market prices and other data are not warranted as complete or accurate and may change without notice. Future fees or subscription tiers may be introduced.