Relationship intelligence
Who you and your team know, and how well, scored from the accounts you connect and searchable in plain English. Happenstance does it for one person or a team, free.
By Jerry Feng, Growth at Happenstance. Updated August 28, 2026.
Continue with GoogleThe short version
Relationship intelligence is software that maps who you and your team know, and how well, from communications data. Affinity, 4Degrees and Introhive sell it to firms by the seat. Happenstance does it for one person, or for a team through groups, from seven connected accounts, free. Ask "who on our team knows someone at Stripe?" and get people ranked by strength of tie, with the path to each one. 500,000+ users.
Who on our team knows anyone at Datadog?
Example22 people at Datadog are in the team's network; the strongest ties are in product and engineering.
| Person | Mutuals |
|---|---|
IH Ivan HorvatProgram Manager at Datadog | |
CW Clara WeissStaff Engineer at Datadog | |
BC Ben CarterProduct Manager at Datadog |
For one person, then for a team
One person. Connect Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Happenstance builds a graph of everyone you've emailed, met, connected with or followed, scores each relationship from the evidence, and lets you ask it questions. That's relationship intelligence for an individual, which none of the firm platforms offers: Affinity, 4Degrees and Introhive start at the firm and work down.
A team. Create a group and have people join. Each member's network becomes searchable by the group, sharing is mutual, and nobody needs a paid seat. A three-person startup, a fund, a university cohort or a Slack community gets the same who-knows-whom map a firm pays five figures for. Groups are free and unlimited, and the largest on Happenstance make 380,000+ people searchable.
The definition, the history of the term and how the category splits are on what's relationship intelligence.
How does Happenstance score relationship strength?
From things that happened between two people. Emails exchanged and how recently, read as headers only. Meetings on the calendar with both of you in them. Being connected on LinkedIn, following each other on Twitter or Instagram, or having each other in Google Contacts. More evidence across more accounts means a higher score; a single connection request accepted three years ago means a low one.
The score is computed on both ends of every path. When you ask for the strongest route to a person, the introducer at the top is the one who knows you well and knows them well, rather than whoever happens to have the most connections.
Who do we know at a company
Name the company and get everyone your network, your friends' networks and your groups know there, with the strongest tie first.
“Who on our team knows someone at Stripe?”
Strongest path to a person
Name the person and get the ranked routes in: direct, through a friend, or through a group member, each with the evidence behind it.
“What's my warmest path to this investor?”
Relationships you forgot you had
The graph includes the people you emailed at a job you have since left. They rank on what happened, not on what you remember.
“Who do I know who invests at seed?”
What the firm platforms add
A system of record. Affinity and 4Degrees are CRMs first: pipelines, deal stages, lists and reporting, with the relationship graph feeding them. Affinity bundles PitchBook, Preqin and Crunchbase data at its Advanced tier, and fund-level permissions, SSO and custom retention at Enterprise.
Professional services at scale. Introhive is built for law and accounting firms with hundreds of partners and an existing CRM to feed, sold and priced as an implementation project.
Consider a firm platform only if
A firm that needs a system of record for deals buys one of these, and Happenstance is the search layer beside it. For everyone else the question is the same and the answer is free; 500,000+ people use Happenstance to ask it.
Consider Affinity only if
- You're a private capital firm choosing a CRM of record and want firm-wide email and calendar capture feeding a deal pipeline
- Essential is $2,000 per user per year, Scale $2,300, Advanced $2,700; annual, per seat, sales-led, no free tier
Consider 4Degrees only if
- You are a VC, PE or investment banking team that wants relationship scoring inside a deal CRM with Crunchbase and PitchBook data
- Pricing isn't published; per user per month, quoted after a sales call
Consider Introhive only if
- You run a law, accounting or consulting firm and need firm-wide capture pushed into an existing enterprise CRM
- Pricing isn't published; enterprise implementation
Consider The Swarm only if
- You are a RevOps or data team that wants a 500M-profile dataset and an API to build on, with your team's connections layered in
- Free up to 10 connectors with no API access; Premium is $99 per company per month
The full set, scored, is in the best relationship intelligence software guide. Head-to-heads: Affinity, 4Degrees, Introhive, The Swarm.
Affinity, 4Degrees, Introhive and The Swarm details from affinity.co, 4degrees.ai, introhive.com and theswarm.com public pages.
What Happenstance reads to build the score
Email is read as headers only. Message content and attachments never reach our servers. Yes. Your connections are searchable only by you, the friends you accept, and the groups you join, and sharing is always mutual. Your public profile shows a constellation of named people you know by default, which you can turn off anytime. We never share, sell, or use your data to train AI models. Happenstance is SOC 2 certified and DTI Trust Level 2; the full list of what is stored and for how long is on the security page.
Frequently asked questions
What's relationship intelligence?
Relationship intelligence is software that maps who you and your team know, and how well, from communications data: who emails whom and how often, who meets whom, who's connected where. The output is a searchable graph of relationships with a strength score on each one, used to find the warmest path to a person or a company.
How does Happenstance score relationship strength?
From evidence in the accounts you connect: how many emails you've exchanged and how recently (headers only, never content), how many meetings you've shared, whether the two of you are connected or follow each other, and whether the person is in your Google Contacts. The score is built for both sides of a path, so an introducer who knows you well but barely knows the target ranks below one who knows both.
Can I see who on my team knows someone at a specific company?
Yes. Create a group, have teammates join, and ask "who on our team knows anyone at Datadog?" The answer lists the people at Datadog your team collectively knows, which teammate knows each one, and how well. Sharing is mutual and per group, so a teammate's network is visible only to groups they chose to join.
Do I need a CRM to use relationship intelligence?
The graph is the product and you search it, with no CRM to administer. Affinity, 4Degrees and Introhive bundle relationship intelligence into a CRM you administer, and it's the CRM you pay for. A firm that needs a system of record for deals buys one; Happenstance is the search layer beside it.
Is relationship intelligence only for venture capital firms?
No, but most of the tools are priced as if it were. Affinity and 4Degrees are built for private capital and Introhive for law and accounting firms, all sold per seat. Founders, sellers, recruiters, job seekers and community managers ask the same question, who do we know at X, and Happenstance answers it for them for free.
Is it free?
Yes. The free plan is the whole product: chat, Sidedoor, and unlimited connected accounts, friends and groups, and usage limits on chat and on web searches beyond your network. Pro is $30 per month, or $24 billed yearly, and it raises the limits. Groups cost nothing at any size.
Does it read my email?
Headers only: who wrote to whom, and when. Message content and attachments never reach Happenstance servers. That is enough to tell how well you know someone, which is what the strength score is built from.
Can I use it from Claude or ChatGPT?
Yes. Happenstance ships a public API, an MCP server, a ChatGPT app, Claude and Claude Code integrations and a CLI, so "who on our team knows someone at Stripe?" works inside the assistant you already use.
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