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Metal does not have a separate Business Development product. BD teams use the same deal-lifecycle surfaces as the rest of the firm: the Active Pipeline, deals and companies, CIM Library, lists, people, chat, and organization-specific workflows.
Some surfaces — including Active Pipeline, NDA Library, Dashboards, and certain workflows — are enabled per organization. If you do not see an item, contact support@metal.ai.

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Understand the operating model

This keeps origination, screening, and coverage attached to durable records instead of spreading them across inboxes and spreadsheets.

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Source and qualify opportunities

1

Connect the systems you already use

Ask an admin to enable your CRM (DealCloud, Salesforce, Affinity, or Dynamo) and file storage. Connect Microsoft Exchange so mail and calendar become part of your firm’s context. PitchBook and other market-data sources appear when they are enabled for your organization.
2

Create or sync the target and the deal

Create the company, then create a deal linked to it — or let a CRM sync bring both in. Set Acquisition Type to Platform or Add on. Record how the opportunity arrived using Source Type, Source Contact, Source Company, and Advisors.
3

Put the deal on the Active Pipeline

Open Active Pipeline. Use the Overview dashboards and the Active Deals list or kanban board. Turn on My Deals to focus on your deals. Drag a card to the next stage when that milestone has actually happened.
4

Save the views your team reviews every week

Saved views on the Active Deals list are shared with everyone who can access the list. Create cuts by owner, stage, sector, or source. See Working with lists.

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Screen CIMs and score opportunities

Open Files → CIM Library to work with CIM screenings.
  • Start a screening from a CIM and link it to the target company. Metal can also create a screening automatically when a file is classified as a CIM and attached to a company.
  • Open a screening to review extracted financials, analysis, and scores against your firm’s frameworks.
  • Admins and Power users configure scoring under Settings → Firm Guidance → Scoring. Custom financial metrics appear on screening detail pages — see Financial metrics.
CIM Library is the productized screening surface. Comparable-company or sector-benchmarking research is usually a workflow configured for your organization, not a default section every customer sees.

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Cover bankers, advisors, and other contacts

1

Keep people on the company

Open Records → People for the firm directory, or add a person from a company profile so they are linked automatically. See Working with people.
2

Review key contacts on the company

Company profiles list Key Contacts — the people linked to that company.
3

Record deal coverage

On the deal, set Source Contact, Source Company, and Advisors so banker and advisor coverage stays on the opportunity. See Record where a deal came from.

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Run intake and other BD workflows

Workflows automate multi-step BD work — teaser or CIM intake, NDA review, one-pagers, comparable-company analysis, and sector search. The catalog is organization-specific. Open Workflows to see what is shared with you. Common patterns, when configured:
  • Email intake — a workflow with an inbound address turns a forwarded teaser, CIM, or NDA into a run. Email is not a generic “upload files to Metal” path. See Files & documents and NDA Library.
  • NDA Library — reviews incoming NDAs against your firm’s published policy and produces a redline. Setup is admin-led.
  • Comparable-company or comparable-deal workflows — run from Workflows or Run Workflow on a company, deal, or project page.
If you do not see a workflow, it is not configured, not shared with you, or tied to an event or email trigger rather than a manual Run button. Ask your Metal admin or Metal contact.

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Ask questions across the firm’s context

  • Press ⌘ K to jump to companies, deals, files, and pages by name.
  • Use Files search to search document contents, not just titles.
  • Press ⌘ J to open Chat and ask questions over the context you can access. Check the underlying source before relying on a generated answer.
See Searching in Metal.

Working with deals

Create deals, set source and acquisition type, and use the Active Pipeline.

Files & documents

Upload CIMs and other files, then find them in Files and CIM Library.

Working with lists

Build screening universes and enrich many records at once.

Run workflows

Start configured workflows and review runs, outputs, and artifacts.