Martin Tobias was pitched by about 4,500 startups last year. He wrote 10 checks.

Now the pre-seed investor is offering the rest of them a consolation prize: an AI tool that tells founders which investors are most likely to say yes.

Tobias, a longtime figure in the Seattle tech scene, is now based in Spokane, Wash. He founded Loudeye, a digital media company that went public during the dot-com boom and later sold to Nokia, and went on to lead biofuel maker Imperium Renewables and group-buying startup Tippr.

He was a venture partner at Ignition Partners, an early backer of DocuSign, before starting Incisive Ventures in 2020. The firm closed a $10.5 million fund last year to back early-stage B2B software companies.

Investor Match started as an internal tool to help Incisive’s portfolio companies find seed and Series A investors. Tobias said he has 17,000 contacts but can only keep about 150 of them in his head, a limit known as Dunbar’s number.

To use the tool, founders upload a pitch deck, and Investor Match returns 20 investors ranked by fit, based on stage, check size, geography and what each firm has actually backed. It also drafts outreach emails, but it doesn’t send them.

Most founders send those emails cold, or pass the list to their existing investors and ask for warm introductions, Tobias said. Investors who have accounts on the platform can also respond to founders directly.

A free preview shows all 20 matches with fit scores, with the top three fully expanded.

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