Creating Trackers

Owned by Coren Feldman
May 25, 2021
4 min read

A tracker is a collection of startups grouped by a subject or project. You may use a tracker to collect companies that specialize in a specific area or you may utilize it to narrow down candidates for a specific project your company is working on.

Create a tracker by either clicking the Add button on the top left of the screen, or by going to the Track tab and clicking “+ New Tracker”.

Step 1: Tracker Type

When creating a new tracker, you can choose between two options:

  1. Public Challenge: A Public Challenge tracker is posted publicly on SwitchPitch and can be linked to as well as found by startups on the platform. When creating a Public Challenge, make sure your business needs are clear and that you add questions and reviewer fields on the appropriate step so startups can give you the most relevant information for your needs.

  2. Internal Tracker: Internal trackers are only viewable to users in your company who are shared on it. Startups added to an internal tracker will not be notified. Internal trackers are a great way of focusing on adding and evaluating startups that meet your search criteria.

Step 2: Tracker Details

Templates

Tracker templates can be created in the settings page (Access by clicking your avatar on the top right of the screen). Creating a tracker template allows you to set defaults for tracker fields, standardizing the data your team is capturing. When creating a tracker, you may click “Change tracker template” at the top of the page to select a different template.

Folders

Companies with many trackers may opt to organize them using folders. Folders can be created on the Track tab by clicking “+ New Folder”. When folders have been created, trackers can be added to them during the creation process by selecting a folder from the Folder dropdown menu.

Permissions

When creating a tracker, you’ll be added as a manager automatically. To add another user, select their name from the dropdown, select the permissions level appropriate (under “Add as”) and click the Add button.

By default there are three permissions, as shown below. Tracker permissions can be edited in the admin menu (click on your avatar on the top right to access).

Advanced Settings

Advanced settings are collapsed by default and can be expanded by clicking “Show advanced settings”.

  • Funnel: Enabling funnel will require you to define it on the next step. Funnels allow you to progress startups through different stages of evaluation and visualize those steps on a board view.

  • Reviews: When enabled, your users can review startups in your tracker based on a 5-star system and comment fields.

 

Step 3: Funnel Stages

If you’ve enabled the funnel, you will need to select your funnel stages before you can finish creating your tracker. By default, SwitchPitch has a funnel with predefined stages that have been used by many of our clients: Identify, Outreach, Diligence and Pilot.

These options can be changed, however, to suit your company’s unique needs in one of several ways:

  1. Click and drag on the dotted icon to reorder the stages.

  2. On any selected funnel, you can click “Manage Stages” to change the funnel stages.

  3. In Settings > Tracker Templates, scroll down to Customizations and click the Funnels tab to edit a funnel’s name, stages and permissions.

Step 4: Customizations

On the last step of the tracker creation, you can add custom fields to be filled in as your users are evaluating startups. Reviewer Fields are fields user must complete when rating startups and Startup Diligence Fields will display as a custom column on the tracker that can be edited inline.