Pinpointing High-Flyers: Using Data to Select the Right Entrepreneurs from the Start

If you’re running an Entrepreneur Support Organization (ESO), you know that not all entrepreneurs are created equal. Some have the drive, the ideas, and the market validation to scale quickly—these “High-Flyers” just need the right push to unlock serious growth. But how do you reliably find them before committing time and resources? Sorting through large applicant pools or existing program alumni can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack, especially if you're approaching it without data.

Identifying the right target group is critical. If you consistently pick entrepreneurs with strong growth potential, you can deliver more impactful support, increase your program’s success rate, and reinforce trust with funders who are eager to invest in proven winners. In short, targeting the right entrepreneurs at the start sets the tone for everything that follows—better outcomes, better validation, and, ultimately, more impact in the communities these business operate.

The High-Flyer Imperative: Target Group Identification, Outreach, and Selection

YBI’s High-Flyer framework underscores that the road to high-impact support starts with smart selection. It’s not enough to rely on open calls and vague criteria. High-performing ESOs can establish data-driven methods to spot entrepreneurs who are not just passionate, but equipped to turn that passion into profitable growth. By filtering for market validation, psychometrics, initial revenue streams, and experience early in the process, you ensure your limited resources deliver maximum value—and you’re able to improve grant proposals with these pieces for funders who demand more than good intentions and to stand out from the crowd.

DIY Approaches: A Good Start, But Not Enough

If you’re trying to identify promising entrepreneurs without specialized tools, you might try:

• Needs Assessments & Surveys: Circulate online forms asking about revenue, customer base, and sector trends.

• Manual Scoring Models: Plug responses into a spreadsheet, assigning points for traction signals like monthly revenue growth or repeat customers.

• Reference Checks & Interviews: Rely on qualitative judgments from staff or external advisors to confirm promising leads.

While these steps can help you build a shortlist, they come with limitations. Surveys often rely on self-reported data, which are typically incomplete or inflated. Potential applicants know there is likely money involved and will respond accordingly. Interviews can add depth but are neither scalable nor guaranteed to unearth hidden gems. The result is risking making decisions based on stale or superficial inputs.

What You Can Do with AI to Improve This Today: If you’re not ready to jump into a fully integrated system, consider small steps that make the selection process more data-driven:

• Keyword Extraction: Use a basic AI tool (like GPT-based prompts) to sift through open-ended application responses, flagging mentions of critical metrics (e.g., monthly sales, customer growth) and categorizing them for quick review.

• Psychometric Analysis: We've mentioned in a previous post about using psychometric surveys to indirectly assess High-Flyer potential. You can read more about that here.

These quick fixes can streamline your search for potential High-Flyers or create questions that are more difficult to fake answers, but they remain limited to traditional survey limitations and biases. Without a robust data capture method, it’s tough to ensure the accuracy, reliability, and scalability that funders love to see.

Our Product: Data-Driven Cohort Selection Without the Guesswork

If you’re ready to do more than just scrape the surface, our data- and AI-powered platform can transform how you identify High-Flyers:

• Firm-Level Financial Data Capture: Instead of relying on self-reported surveys or static documents, entrepreneurs input their real-time business metrics through a chat-based interface. Revenues, expenses, inventory turns—this raw data becomes a an unbiased source for identifying and sorting high-potential businesses from the population. Business owners are incentivized to keep it bounded in reality when it influences things like mentorship guidance and automated AI-driven advice.

• Automated Scoring for Market Traction: Our platform’s Investability Index ranks entrepreneurs based on measurable indicators of growth readiness. Instead of guessing who’s ready, you use evidence-based scores to shortlist candidates. This can be based on individual metrics, or market environments.

• Market Environment Consideration: Even the best entrepreneurs can encounter challenging market situations that impact their locality, industry, or many other factors. While individual data is important, it's far from the whole picture for business owners, and our system incorporates external data to reflect the rising and falling tides of each environment.

  
  

By integrating with a tool like ours, you move beyond manual spreadsheets and interviews, putting quantitative, financial insights at the forefront. The tool gives business owners a consistently valuable resource, and automatically creates a population of potential applicants for your next program - no extra surveys or work needed! This approach not only saves you time but also builds trust with funders who can see that your pipeline is consistently filled with verifiably high-potential entrepreneurs, and can be an encouragement for program expansion.

A Quick Scenario: Finding the Needle in a Global Haystack

Imagine you’re reviewing applications from young entrepreneurs across multiple cities. Traditionally, you might scan their responses, hoping to see clues of sustainable revenue or motivation. With our platform:

1. Continuous Metrics Collection: Applicants share ongoing revenue snapshots and expense patterns via a simple chat interface.

2. AI-Driven Ranking: The system automatically flags and ranks those consistently showing upward revenue trends, expense management as “High-Flyer candidates.”

3. Informed Selection: Instead of spending hours comparing notes and gut feelings, you pick your cohort confidently, supported by credible data.

   
   

The result are cohorts that actually reflect the high-growth profiles you’ve been targeting, and funders who appreciate the rigor behind your selections. And it provides an ongoing system for staying in touch for mentorship activities, and impact reporting once your program ends.

Your Next Steps

If you're selecting participants manually today, we suggest starting small:

1. Refine Your Application Form: Ask for concrete figures like last month’s sales, number of paying customers, or monthly revenue growth. Even self-reported data can offer a baseline to begin with. Verifying this data is important, but starting with something is better than nothing.

2. Basic AI Experiment: Try using basic GPT prompts to classify open-ended survey responses into categories like “Early Traction,” “Stable Growth,” and “Needs Validation.”

3. Iterate & Improve: With each application cycle, refine your criteria. Over time, you’ll notice patterns and learn which indicators actually predict long-term success.

But remember, manually juggling these steps consumes staff time and introduces inconsistencies. Without a unified, consistent system, scaling up and maintaining quality control can be a challenge.

Looking Ahead

Identifying High-Flyers effectively sets the stage for all other YBI criteria—from delivering tailored training to unlocking capital with confidence. By embracing data-driven selection, you ensure that every entrepreneur you support stands a genuine chance of achieving the kind of growth your funders want to see.

As our series continues, we’ll explore how similar AI-driven insights streamline other critical functions, like Training and Ecosystem Development. Equipped with the right tools, you can move beyond guesswork and start shaping a pipeline of entrepreneurs who are not only promising on paper, but verifiably ready to fly.