How We Verify Every Investor Email (SMTP, Catch-All Exclusion, Double Pass)

Every list of investors you find online makes the same promise: verified contacts. Almost none of them explain what verified means. This page documents exactly what we do to every firm in the InvestorLists.vc database, so you can judge the data on the process behind it.

What goes into the database

Before a firm earns its row, it has to pass a set of checks that most databases skip:

• A live, working website. Every firm is checked for a functioning site. Funds that quietly wound down, parked their domain or stopped operating are removed instead of padding the count.
• Named decision-makers. A firm name and an info@ inbox will not get your deck read. Firms come with up to three partners, principals or managing directors, with their name and position: 15,600 named decision-makers as of September 2026.
• Verified work emails. Every verified email in the database belongs to a named decision-maker, at their firm's domain, and passed live verification: 9,160 as of September 2026, alongside 12,240 LinkedIn profiles for decision-makers whose email could not be verified to that standard. An address that fails the checks is left out rather than padded in.

How the email verification works

Verification happens at the mail-server level, in three steps:

1. SMTP verification. For each address we open a live conversation with the receiving mail server and ask whether the specific mailbox exists. The server's answer tells us whether the address can actually receive mail. This is a real-time check against the firm's own infrastructure.
2. Catch-all exclusion. Some domains accept mail to any address, which makes every guess look valid. Those catch-all domains are the main reason bounce rates on bought lists are high. We detect catch-all behavior and exclude addresses that only pass because of it, even though keeping them would make our numbers look bigger.
3. A second, independent pass. Verified addresses go through a second round of verification with a separate external tool before an email enters the database. Two independent systems have to agree before an email reaches the database.

Why we publish this

Founders have learned to distrust the word verified, for good reason. Publishing the process is the only honest way to use it. When you send a fundraising email to an address from this database, it was confirmed deliverable at the mail-server level, on a domain that gives real answers, twice.

Data also ages, so the database is refreshed regularly: firms are re-checked, emails re-verified and new firms added. Last update: October 2026, shown on the FAQ page.

See it for yourself

The free plan runs on the same database with the same checks: unlock 10 investors in full, test their verified emails with any verification tool you like, then judge the full database by what you find.