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Q3 2026 Edition · Updated 2026-08-25
Crunchbase tells you the day they raised. We tell you 47 days before the deck.
If you evaluate companies for a living, angel, scout, seed fund, corp-dev or PE, and want a calmer signal before the round gets obvious, you are in the right place. No code-reading required.
- Series A within 60d
- 3.4×
- more likely vs. velocity alone
- Median lead time
- 21-47d
- before the round announces
- Panel size
- n=219
- confirmed rounds, SSRN-indexed
350+ venture-backed GitHub orgs ranked every week by commit velocity and contributor diversity: the two signals that, combined, drove the 3.4× Series-A lift in the SSRN panel of 219 startup-period observations (median lead time 21-47 days). It is a tool, not a fund, we surface the signal, you make the calls. Free to browse, built to give you a clearer read before the round gets obvious.
How this started · 30 seconds
Saturday afternoon, low autumn light through the kitchen window. The fan in the back of the laptop had stopped, the way it does when nothing is running. I had three open tabs: a small fintech’s GitHub, my notes file, and a draft email I’d written and not sent.
Their commit velocity had tripled in fourteen days. Four new contributors. Three new infrastructure repos. None of it was on Crunchbase yet.
I closed the laptop. Three weeks later they announced a $4M Series A.
This product is the version of me that wouldn’t have closed the laptop.
Long version on /origin , the same scene at full length, plus the three false beliefs it collapsed.
Every page on this site follows one framework
1 · Hook
Grab your attention in one sentence.
The headline above is the Hook, “47 days before the deck.” It names a specific, measurable gap every investor feels. No jargon, no fluff, no “revolutionary platform.”
2 · Story
Keep your attention with a true moment.
The block above this banner is the Story, a Saturday morning, a laptop, a fintech’s GitHub lighting up. Stories carry truth better than feature lists ever can.
3 · Offer
Convert your attention into action.
Every page ends with a clear next step, a free Sunday digest, a paid dashboard, or a methodology deep-dive. The Offer is always an honest value exchange, never a pitch.
Russell Brunson calls this the Hook-Story-Offer framework (Traffic Secrets, Ch 5). We apply it to every page on this site so even the free content respects your attention.
The 5-step shift · The discovery moment
How a late story became an earlier signal.
- Step 1 · Backstory
Ten years writing €5k-€50k angel cheques through warm intros, Athens, not San Francisco. Most mornings looked the same: laptop open, three Substack tabs, the WhatsApp group where deals showed up about a week after they had already closed.
- Step 2 · Desire
Be the first investor in the room. Not the third one shown the deck. The first cheque earns the founder remembering you when the round oversubscribes; the third cheque is a wire transfer with no memory attached.
- Step 3 · External wall
By the time a deck reached me through any warm intro, three other investors were already in. I told myself it was geography, network seniority, conference attendance, every explanation I could find that did not force me to change my method.
- Step 4 · Internal shift
Stopped networking. Started reading commit graphs the way quants read SEC filings. Same public data everyone else had, a lens almost nobody was using, and that asymmetry, not a better rolodex, turned out to be the whole opportunity.
- Step 5 · New opportunity
Code-side acceleration leads the deck by 21-47 days. The data is public. The lens was missing. Twenty-one to forty-seven days is the window where one Tuesday morning email lands in a founder's inbox before any other investor in any rolodex has the company on their radar.
In plain English
These are the teams that suddenly started shipping far more than their own normal this week, more engineers, more infrastructure, more activity than usual. You don’t read the code; we translate the movement into business language. The numbers on each card are the receipts.
This week's top movers
As of 2026-08-25
Who you become · The identity shift
You stop hearing the story late and start seeing the change earlier.
This shift is not about sounding smarter. It is about seeing what changed while the window is still calm enough to matter. Instead of relying on the same crowded surfaces as everyone else, you start with a public signal that gives you a cleaner read on timing before the round feels obvious.
The Wealth outcome
Better deals, written earlier, at cheque sizes that compound.
- First investor on three breakouts a quarter, at €5-50k cheque sizes that survive a partner meeting because they're the talked-about deals.
- Reply rate ~4× the warm-intro template, because you led with what the engineering team is shipping, not what the deck claims.
- First-meeting-to-term-sheet timeline compressed from months to weeks, because the round opened *after* you were already in the conversation.
The Status outcome
The reputation of the analyst who calls it before the deck lands.
- You notice the breakout while everyone else is still waiting for the familiar database update.
- You send the email while the window is still calm enough to matter.
- You carry a clearer timing signal into the conversation instead of repeating what the market already knows.
Read the long version on /identity , who the buyer was before, who they are after, and the seven shifts that take you from one to the other.
The category we’re defining
Code-Side Sourcing, a new sourcing channel for venture capital.
Code-Side Sourcing is the practice of using public repository-velocity data as a leading indicator of venture-stage outcomes, surfacing fundraises 21 to 47 days before pitch decks circulate. It runs alongside warm intros, decks, and databases, not in place of them.
Read the canonical definition at /code-side-sourcing , what it replaces, the five first principles, who practises it, and the open methodology that grounds it.
What this whole site argues
If commit-velocity acceleration is the most leading public signal in venture capital, then every other deal-flow source, pitch decks, AngelList, Crunchbase, warm intros is a lagging indicator.
Read the long version on the 12-minute walkthrough or the 90-second pitch. Three objections, three breakdowns, the SSRN panel that proves the 21-to-47-day lead time.
The three objections every investor raises
And why each one is wrong.
#1 · Vehicle
“GitHub data is just noise.”
We don’t look at absolute numbers, only sharp deviations from each company’s own baseline. That isn’t noise, that’s a regime change.
#2 · Internal
“I have enough deal flow already.”
Your network shows you what other investors already see. We open the 21-to-47-day window before consensus forms.
#3 · External
“Public data isn’t edge.”
Renaissance Technologies started in 1988 on data anyone could buy, Reuters quotes, SEC filings, OPRA ticks. Medallion compounded ~39% net for thirty years. Edge wasn’t in the data. It was in the lens.
The Saturday I learned that lesson on a GitHub page
October 2024. A small fintech team, three founders, one repo, beautifully boring product. I opened their org page on a Saturday morning. Their commit velocity had tripled in the prior fortnight. Four new contributors had joined. They’d spun up three new infrastructure repos. All of it on github.com, indexed by Google, free to read.
I knew three other angels who wrote checks at the same size I did. They all had GitHub accounts. None of them opened that org’s page that month. I checked.
Three weeks later the team announced a $4M Series A. The two investors who got in had either been told by a warm intro fine, but slow, or had been reading the same public data I had. The other three later said they “missed” the round. They didn’t miss it. They didn’t read it.
Same as SEC filings. Same as Reuters quotes. Same as every market that ever produced an alpha-generating fund out of information sitting in plain sight. The data is open. The lens is the edge.
Full breakdown on the long-form walkthrough.
Acceleration Watch · Free forever · One email a week
5 breakout startups, every Sunday, 47 days before the deck arrives.
You reach out while the round is still 47 days away, not after the deck is circulating. It’s the same engineering signal that preceded 219 startup-period observations in our SSRN-published panel. Two boxes, twenty seconds, free forever.
The stack · Current rate
€1,728 of priced artefacts. €49 / month.
Each line is anchored against what the same artefact costs elsewhere Pitchbook for the dashboard tier, McKinsey-grade for the deep dives, hand-built for the watchlist. The total below is what a fund would spend assembling each piece standalone. Founding members who joined before 2026-06-30 keep their rate for life; today the stack is €49/month.
- Live Dashboard, 350+ ranked orgs, refreshed Mondays 06:00 UTC€348 / yr
- 219-Startup Backtest CSV, the full SSRN panel, five quarters€297 once
- Monthly Sector Deep-Dive PDF, 12 issues per year, your sector€588 / yr
- Two Free Chrome Extensions, Crunchbase badge + VC GitHub Lookup€198 / yr value
- Async Watchlist Build, 10 orgs matching your written thesis€297 once
- Free MCP Server, 6 tools inside Claude / Cursor / WindsurfBundled, never gated
- Methodology Vault, SSRN preprint + regression code, CC BY 4.0Open by default
- 30-Day Signal-or-It's-Free Guarantee, reply REFUND, no clawbackRisk-reversal bonus
- Total priced value
- €1,728
- You pay
- €49/mo
Founding rate locked for the lifetime of your subscription. Public rate will rise to €49 / month once the founding cohort closes. Cancel anytime, guarantee covers the first 30 days, no questions.
The movement, member-side
Charter Cohort 2026, 25 of 25 seats open.
The wins ledger shows the startups our methodology surfaced before fundraise. The Charter Cohort shows the investors reading those signals, public thesis, public picks, public scorecard. Pseudonymous handles welcome.
Open seat
AI Infrastructure Angel →€5k - €25k angel checks · AI Infrastructure, AI Agents
Open seat
Dev Tools Syndicate Lead →€100k - €500k syndicate · Developer Tools, Developer Platforms
Open seat
Technical SaaS Scout →€25k - €100k active angel · Technical SaaS, Developer Tools
Open seat
Data Infrastructure Partner →€500k - €2m small fund · Data Infrastructure, Developer Platforms
What The Data Nerd believes
8polarities. If you nod through them, you’re my reader.
The founder character has to take a side. These are mine. If any of them feels wrong, this product is probably wrong for you and that’s honest.
- 1.
For: Public data is more valuable than private data.
Against: Edge from access.
Renaissance Technologies started in 1988 on data anyone could buy, Reuters quotes, SEC filings, OPRA ticks. Medallion compounded ~39% net for thirty years. The data wasn't edge. The lens was. Same logic on GitHub.
- 2.
For: Code is more honest than copy.
Against: The deck is the company.
A pitch deck is a marketing artifact written for the next round. A merge graph is the company's actual behaviour, updated daily.
- 3.
For: Anonymity is a credibility signal.
Against: Cult of personality.
If the signal needs a charismatic founder to land, the signal isn't strong enough. If we're right, the data carries the argument.
- 4.
For: €49/mo is a feature, not a price ceiling.
Against: Six-figure data subscriptions for six-person funds.
We'd rather have a thousand readers who tell five friends than a hundred enterprise contracts. Founding members who joined before 2026-06-30 keep their price locked forever.
- 5.
For: Methodology before metrics.
Against: Black-box scores.
Every number on this site links to the formula that produced it. The /methodology page is the moat. If you can reproduce the regression, you can audit the claim. If we hide the formula we deserve to be ignored.
- 6.
For: False positives published in the same email as the wins.
Against: Curated case-study reels.
Every Tuesday digest names at least one signal that fired wrong the prior week, with the post-mortem inline. A vendor who never publishes a miss is a vendor with no calibration discipline. The /scorecard page is permanent and includes every miss.
- 7.
For: Async over live.
Against: Discovery-call theatre.
Two daily reply batches. No calendar links above the Sharp tier. A long written email beats a 30-minute call you scheduled to qualify yourself. If the question can be answered in writing, the call wastes the buyer's hour and the founder's anonymity at the same time.
- 8.
For: Distribution is a moat. Friction is the leak.
Against: Walled-garden datasets.
Every public surface has a markdown mirror at /md. Every page has an agent-card endpoint. The MCP server installs in one line. The OpenAPI spec is at a stable URL. We pay the cost of redundant discoverability so the reader, the agent, and the LLM all find us through whichever path fits them.
More on the character behind the methodology, the The Data Nerd character bible (parables, voice rules, where you’ll meet me).
Anonymous handle, not an anonymous track record
You can take this to an investment committee without taking a personality with it. The handle is pseudonymous on purpose; the methodology is credentialed and auditable: an SSRN-indexed paper (n=219), a persistent ORCID (0009-0002-2222-4112), and the full regression released CC BY 4.0 so your own team can reproduce every number before you commit a euro. Your committee buys the math, not the messenger.
What we're tired of watching
Five sentences. If any of them lands, you’re one of us.
- We're tired of watching three-founder teams in Athens, Lagos, Bangalore, Tallinn, and São Paulo get passed over because their cap table doesn't read the right Slack groups.
- We're tired of watching an investor who spotted it early, a team suddenly shipping far more, four new engineers, new infrastructure appearing out of nowhere, get beaten to the round three weeks later by a fund whose only edge was a warm intro that arrived four days before the public news.
- We're tired of the lie that the best investments only flow through the people who can afford the right dinners.
- We're not building a tool. We're rebuilding the shape of who gets capital first.
- If you've ever closed a laptop and gone to bed because you weren't sure you'd earned the right to send a cold email, and three weeks later watched somebody else get into the round, this movement is for you.
Read the long version on the two-layer manifesto what we believe, what we refuse, the seven pillars, the named enemy, who’s on the bus.
What we believe
The next generation of great investments will be found in data, not networks.
The best startups leave footprints in their code long before they leave footprints in the press. Our mission is to make engineering momentum visible to every investor, not just the ones with the right rolodex. A world where capital finds builders faster is a world where better products get built.
The enemy isn’t a fund or a competitor. It’s the warm-intro roulette a sourcing system that rewards proximity to the right rolodex and punishes builders who happen to live three time zones away. We’re replacing that roulette with a public, reproducible, code-side signal anyone with curiosity can read.
Warm-intro roulette is the named enemy. If the system that’s been gating your deal flow for ten years is the system, not your network, does naming it change what you’d try next?
Where to start
You do not need a persona. You need the right starting point for this week.
Most people should start free one calm read every Sunday. The other two lanes are only for when a live question is already costing you, or your team needs a method it can defend. Same signal. Different urgency.
Get the Sunday issue
Move faster
If a live question is already getting expensive
Use the 24-hour lane when you need a sharper read now. This is for the week when five names are no longer enough and you need the next shortlist while the timing still matters.
Best first step
First Look
Reuse the method
If you need a workflow your team can defend
Start with the paper and buyer's guide when trust, repeatability, or internal sign-off matters more than speed. You get the logic, the thresholds, and the proof before you commit to a recurring lane.
Best first step
Methodology + buyer's guide
This is for you if
- You write 5-40 angel checks a year and want one extra leading indicator your network can’t give you.
- You scout for a fund and need a Monday memo your principal respects, sourced from public, reproducible data.
- You sit in corp-dev, PE, or as a non-engineer tech VP, you evaluate companies for a living, don’t read code yourself, and want the engineering signal in plain business English.
- You read a methodology paper before you trust a metric.
This is not for you if
- You’re a Series-B+ partner with a six-figure data budget - Harmonic, Tracxn, and Affinity are built for you, not us.
- You want a tool that screens code-quality or runs founder background checks, that’s a different category.
- You source exclusively from warm intros and don’t want a cold path to founders. Engineering signal opens cold lanes.
- You believe public data has no edge. Our long-form pitch argues the opposite, if it doesn’t convince you, this isn’t the tool.
Three quick gut-checks before the price
- If a 24-hour lead on the same ten ranked startups changed one cheque you write in the next 12 months, at a €5k-€50k angel range with a 3× exit on one in five, would that head-start be worth €197/month?
- If you never had to read a line of code, hire a quant, or chase a warm intro, and the signal still found the founders before consensus did, would €49/month be a fair trade?
- If the founding rate locks forever for everyone who joins before the cohort closes - and the public price is already scheduled to step to €29/€197 after, does the cost of waiting one more week feel cheaper than the cost of locking in tonight?
If you said yes to any one of these, the rung that fits sits in the ladder below. If you said no to all three, the free Sunday digest is the right rhythm for now, no upgrade pressure, ever.
A free rung, a €7 rung, a €49/mo rung, all the way up to a €49,997/yr rung. If even one of those fits where you actually are, would you let the right rung pick itself?
Funnel Hub , every entry point on one page. Free watch, dashboard, Insider tiers, sector sweeps, quiz, walkthrough, and the 4-stage launch funnel.
See all funnelsSimple pricing. Free forever for the curious.
The founding window closed June 30, exactly as promised. Founding members keep their price for life.
Three doors. The free tier is enough for most solo angels and scouts. Upgrade only when filtering the full universe pays for itself.
Free
€0forever
Acceleration Watch, the Monday email investors set their calendar to.
- Acceleration Watch: top 5 breakouts every Monday 09:00 UTC
- Free Scout Receipts at /receipts
- MCP server for Claude / Cursor
- JSON / CSV / RSS public dataset
Most popular
Dashboard
€49per month
8-object stack, €1,728 of value, 30-day Signal-or-It's-Free guarantee.
- Sunday Digest, Full Dashboard (140 startups, 15 sectors)
- 219-startup Backtest CSV (the SSRN dataset)
- Monthly Sector Deep Dive PDF (your pick)
- Chrome Extension + Claude MCP + Async Watchlist Build
- 30-day Signal-or-It's-Free guarantee. Email me, every cent back.
Insider Circle
€197per month
Everything in Dashboard + 8-object Insider stack.
- Private Investor Telegram + Monthly Live Briefing
- Insider API + Slack/Telegram Spike Alerts
- Quarterly Trend Briefing PDF + Portfolio Overlap report
- Direct line to the founder (text/email)
- 30-day Signal-or-It's-Free guarantee.
Or try the €7 First Look Pass one sector deep-dive, one-time payment, ahead of the next weekly digest. 30-day Signal-or-It’s-Free guarantee: any paid rung, 30 days, email me, every cent back. No forms, no survey.
For active funds, high-ticket research partnerships
The ladder doesn’t stop at the Dashboard.
€4,970 / yr
Sharp Tier
Application-gated. 8-fund cap.
€14,997 / yr
Methodology Partnership
Done-with-you. 5-fund cap.
€49,997 / yr
The Vault
Methodology source. 2-fund cap.
All three are async-only, no live calls, no in-person attendance. See the full ten-rung ladder for application links and complete value stacks.
All sectors we track
15 sectors · 350+ venture-backed startups · refreshed weekly
Each sector page ranks the top startups by 14-day commit velocity change, with contributor growth and signal type. Updated every Monday at 09:00 UTC.
Healthcare
26startups tracked
Startups applying technology to patient care, health systems, and drug discovery.
View rankings →EdTech
37startups tracked
Startups transforming education through adaptive learning and institutional software.
View rankings →E-commerce Infrastructure
26startups tracked
Startups building backend systems and APIs for online retail.
View rankings →Supply Chain
24startups tracked
Startups digitizing logistics, procurement, and inventory management.
View rankings →Web3
42startups tracked
Startups building decentralized applications and blockchain infrastructure.
View rankings →Enterprise SaaS
31startups tracked
Startups building vertical and horizontal B2B software.
View rankings →Data Infrastructure
35startups tracked
Startups building pipelines, warehouses, and observability platforms.
View rankings →Robotics
28startups tracked
Startups building autonomous robots and robotic process automation.
View rankings →Legal Tech
22startups tracked
Startups automating legal workflows and compliance management.
View rankings →HR Tech
17startups tracked
Startups building recruiting, people management, and workforce analytics tools.
View rankings →PropTech
23startups tracked
Startups applying technology to real estate and property management.
View rankings →AgTech
16startups tracked
Startups applying technology to agriculture and precision farming.
View rankings →Gaming
39startups tracked
Startups building game engines, multiplayer infrastructure, and gaming analytics.
View rankings →Space Tech
23startups tracked
Startups building launch vehicles, satellites, and space data platforms.
View rankings →Social & Community
22startups tracked
Startups building social networks, community platforms, and creator tools.
View rankings →Commercial evaluation
Send crawlers and buyers toward the pages that help them decide whether to trust, compare, and buy.
Proof
Keep authority flowing from evidence and case studies into the commercial paths.
Live now
Point both users and crawlers at the freshest recurring surfaces on the site.
Where to go next
The 8 highest-signal pages on this site
Most of the value isn’t in the sector grids, it’s in the methodology, the weekly leaderboard, and the receipts you can run against your own GitHub stars.
Weekly leaderboard
Top 10 commit-velocity movers across every tracked sector, rebuilt every Monday.
Signal of the week
The single sharpest momentum break we observed this week, with the 14-day chart and decision rule.
Signal vocabulary
The six atomic primitives we compute, formula, decision rule, common pitfall for each.
Methodology
How we compute commit velocity, sample frame, biases we accept, and what we explicitly do not claim.
Reproducibility
Step-by-step HowTo to re-run the panel against the public dataset. CC BY 4.0.
Attestations
Every public claim with source, date, and a fact-check status (ClaimReview).
Knowledge graph
Defined-term hub linking every sector, signal primitive, and competitor entity.
Alternatives
Honest side-by-side: Harmonic, Forager, SignalFire Beacon, Affinity, Tracxn, and where each beats us.
Signal Intelligence
All posts →2026-08-25
Weekly Signal Report, Q3 2026
This week's top 10 startups by engineering acceleration across 15 sectors. liberusoftware leads with +3275% commit velocity change. Data from 350+ tracked startups.
2026-08-16
Venture Scout Programs: How to Join One and Actually Earn Carry
A practical guide to venture scout programs: what they are, which funds run them, what they pay, and the five-step process to get selected, including how to build verifiable sourcing receipts before you apply.
From the research panel
All 30 findings →SSRN-indexed methodology, CC BY 4.0, quotable numbers from a 219-observation panel of venture-backed startup GitHub activity.
#01
Median 14-day commit velocity for VC-backed startups: 71 commits
#02
Mean commit velocity is 173, over 2.4× the median
#03
Top decile commit velocity: 392 commits per 14 days
#04
Quarterly velocity change ranges from −94% to +1,647%
#05
Only 49% of VC-backed startups show positive velocity growth
#06
Framework migration dominates: 75% of venture-backed startup GitHub signals
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Pillar pages & topic clusters
Deep-dive entry points for the most-asked questions about GitHub momentum signals, methodology, sectors, signal types, and tooling comparisons.
Code-Side Sourcing
The category we're defining, definition, first principles, practitioners
The named mechanism
Commit-Velocity Acceleration Engine, formula, falsifiability, ladder
Methodology
How signals are computed
This week's signals
Weekly top movers
Trending now
Real-time leaderboard
Startups to watch
By sector + region
Signal taxonomy
Every signal type
Alternatives
vs Harmonic, Affinity, Tracxn
Answers
Direct answers to buyer-side sourcing questions
Compare
Side-by-side tool comparisons
Glossary
Defined terms
FAQ
60+ answers
Research panel
30 SSRN findings
Blog
Long-form analyses
Prediction markets
Series A Race 2026
Citation guide
How to cite us
State of GitHub
Monthly engineering-velocity address
Watch (silent demo)
90-second visual walkthrough
Summit
5 days · 20 anonymous-by-design talks · free during the live window
Launches
Active and archived 4-stage funnels
Press kit
Wire-ready releases + boilerplate
Platform-native openers
Twelve openers, one signal, how the same product story gets reframed for Twitter, Reddit, HN, dev.to, LinkedIn, Telegram and seven more
Top 100
100 voices we read on the engineering-signal frontier, substacks, podcasts, GitHub orgs, datasets, each ICP-scored
Free · 30 seconds · No signup
What’s your developer Scout Score?
Paste any GitHub username and see how many validated unicorns you starred before they hit $1B.