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Dec 7, 2017

Reminiscing about my childhood led me to remember playing Monopoly with my family when we gathered together for holidays. As a child, it was just a board game, and I was always excited to play with those awesome tokens, especially my favorite, the Scottish Terrier.

As an adult, I know the game is more about finances and applying them to our everyday life. In the finance world, analysts dig up financial information on public companies to recommend buying or selling stocks. In sourcing, I love to use financial information to find start-up companies, collect leads from various public financial documents and more. Here are a couple of my favorite methods:

EMMA  

Municipal Services Rulemaking Board (MSRB) has a site called Electronic Municipal Market Access Website (EMMA). EMMA provides FREE (yes, free!) public access to official disclosures, credit ratings, and other resources and tools. The MSRB operates the EMMA website under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

EMMA has potential information on individuals who have to submit financial/operating filings for their organization including, CEOs, CFOs, and treasurers for government, universities, healthcare facilities and more. Thus, a thorough search will lead you to candidates and decision-makers in the financial industry.

Going to the “Browse Issuers” tab will allow you to search issuers by state. The issuers can be sorted by state, city, county, and others (conduits, localities, etc.). When I choose one of the “Issuers,” Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit) for Washington, I can see contact information for the issuer. In this case, the individual is a Deputy Executive Director in the Greater Seattle area.

Under “Issuer” details tab you will find security details including issues, trade activity, pre-sale documents, official statements, continuing disclosure, trade activity, and ratings. Perusing through the financial information documents can lead you to other contacts, too.

Opening the “General Obligation Bonds” will lead you to a list of Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures (CUSIP) numbers, which are similar to serial numbers. If you have the time, you can find names of CEOs, CFOs and Directors of Accounting (with first, middle and last names) and more – a big help for those common names. The “Financial Disclosures” tab has annual financial information and operating data, which contains contact information as well.

Venture Capital (VC)/Angel Investors

For small businesses or up-and-coming business in emerging industries, venture capital is provided by investors (high net worth individuals) or “angel” investors and venture capital firms.

I know what you’re thinking, “What does this have to do with recruiting or sourcing?” Stay with me – it gets better! Industries such as Consumer, Fintech, Healthcare, Hardware, and Enterprise use VC firms to help them get the financing for their start-up.

Start-ups, depending on what industry you are in, can mean job openings, thus, opportunities for you to place your A-player talent with their company.

One of my favorite sites to utilize for finding VC firms includes CB Insights (offers a free trial). You can find articles on top start-ups to watch, maps of start-ups in the U.S. and more.

Another method to find VC firms is some good old-fashion Boolean “venture capital firms automotive industry” gave me a list of sites. Opening one of the results had a portfolio option and a list of their active investments, which means possible leads to you.

Benjamin Franklin had a great quote “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Researching new and out-of-the-box methods can give you significant returns.