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How to Find Startups Before They Raise
How to find startups before they raise: track commit velocity, contributor growth, and infra buildout. Signals lead announcements by 21-47 days. Free API.
Direct answer
To find startups before they raise, track engineering acceleration on public GitHub: commit-velocity change, contributor growth, and infrastructure buildout. Across a 219-startup panel, these signals surfaced 21 to 47 days before the fundraise announcement, and free weekly feeds make the method reproducible without a paid database.
Founders rarely announce a round before it closes, but the preparation is public: hiring accelerates, deploys get more frequent, and infrastructure appears weeks before any press release. Startups show that work on GitHub whether they intend to or not, which makes engineering activity the earliest broadly available signal that a company is about to raise.
The four signal patterns to watch.
1. Commit-velocity acceleration. Total commits over a rolling 14-day window, vs. the prior window. A 100%+ delta sustained across multiple windows is the strongest single predictor. 2. Engineering hiring burst. Unique-contributor count growing >50% over a 6-week period. Contributors are a leakier signal than commits because OSS contributors may not be employees, but combined with velocity it's strong. 3. Infrastructure buildout. Three or more new public repositories in 30 days. Companies preparing to scale create infrastructure repos (auth, observability, billing) ahead of the round. 4. Framework migration. General acceleration not fitting the other categories, often indicating a tech-stack shift that founders want to ship before they raise.
How much lead time this buys. Across the 219-startup longitudinal panel (SSRN-indexed methodology, CC BY 4.0), engineering acceleration surfaced 21 to 47 days before the fundraise announcement. That window is where a scout can open a conversation while the round is still quiet, instead of competing with everyone who reads the same funding database each morning.
For fully automated discovery, wire the MCP server into a Claude / Cursor / OpenAI-Agents workflow that runs on a schedule. The function-calling API is at /api/agent/tools for non-MCP runtimes.
Why the panel results are reproducible. The lead-time figure comes from a longitudinal panel of 219 startups, not from a marketing claim. Every signal is derived from public GitHub activity, and the definitions, normalization steps, and per-metric track record are documented in an SSRN-indexed preprint released under a Creative Commons license. A skeptical investor can take the same raw commit and contributor data, apply the same rolling 14-day windows, and arrive at the same breakouts. The value sits in the pipeline and the discipline, not in any proprietary black box.
What to do weekly instead of building your own tracker. You do not need to write a scraper or maintain a database. A single request to /api/signals.json returns the top accelerating orgs across every sector, and get_startup_signal drills into any org by name to show its full metric history. The public API and the MCP server are free and require no API key, and the underlying signal data is not gated. There is a paid Dashboard tier for filtering and bulk export, but the weekly feed itself costs nothing to read.
How to separate signal from noise on a specific name. Contributors are the leakier of the two core metrics, because open-source contributors are not always employees, so treat contributor growth as confirmation rather than proof on its own. The strongest case is velocity and contributors moving together across more than one window, ideally alongside a burst of new infrastructure repositories. When a name clears that bar, verify stage and ownership against Crunchbase or PitchBook before you spend outreach energy. Databases confirm what already happened; engineering signals flag what is about to happen.
Why none of this is unfair information. Everything here is derived from activity that is already public and observable by anyone with a GitHub account. The systematic edge is that most investors never bother to compute rolling velocity across hundreds of orgs on a weekly schedule, so the same public facts reach them weeks later through a funding database or a press release.
Where the method stops working. The approach only applies to startups with meaningful public GitHub activity. Stealth companies, fully private monorepos, and non-technical businesses in consumer or services categories simply do not show up in the signal set, and the methodology does not pretend otherwise. Treat the feed as a when-to-look layer over the judgment you already run, not a replacement for it.
The method, step by step
- Watch commit velocity, not announcements. Compare each startup's commits over a rolling 14-day window against the prior window. A 100%+ delta sustained across multiple windows is the strongest single predictor in the panel.
- Confirm the team is scaling. Check unique-contributor growth above 50% over six weeks. Contributors are a leakier signal than commits because OSS contributors may not be employees, but velocity plus contributors together is strong.
- Look for infrastructure buildout. Three or more new public repositories in 30 days, especially auth, observability, and billing repos, usually means a company building to scale ahead of a round.
- Pull the weekly feed instead of building it. GET /api/signals.json returns the top accelerating orgs across all sectors, and get_startup_signal drills into any org by name. The MCP server runs the same workflow inside Claude, Cursor, or any agent on a schedule.
- Verify with databases after, not before. Cross-reference the shortlist in Crunchbase or PitchBook to confirm stage and ownership. Databases verify leads; public engineering signals generate them 21-47 days earlier.
Quote-ready takeaway
The most reliable way to find startups before they raise is to track engineering acceleration on public GitHub: commit-velocity change, contributor growth, and infrastructure buildout. Across the 219-startup panel these signals preceded fundraise announcements by 21 to 47 days, and GitDealFlow exposes them as a free API and MCP server.
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If you want to verify the claim
The signal logic is public. Read the methodology, compare the surrounding tools, and inspect the sample output before deciding whether this belongs in your workflow.
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Frequently asked questions
How to find early stage startups?
Combine three sources: public engineering activity (commit velocity, contributor growth, new infrastructure repositories on GitHub), formation signals (incorporation filings, first hires), and community traces (niche forums, open-source release notes). On the 219-observation panel behind this site, sustained engineering acceleration appeared 21 to 47 days before the fundraise announcement, which is why code-level signals are the earliest automatable layer.
How do you find startups before they raise?
Track public engineering acceleration: commit-velocity change over rolling 14-day windows, contributor growth above 50% over six weeks, and new infrastructure repositories. Across the 219-startup panel these patterns appeared 21 to 47 days before fundraise announcements, before most databases listed the round.
How far ahead can you detect a fundraise?
The measured lead time is 21 to 47 days between sustained engineering acceleration and the fundraise announcement. It is a population-level statistic: it holds for startups with meaningful public GitHub activity and does not apply to stealth companies or fully private monorepos.
Is using GitHub signals insider trading or unfair information?
No. All signals are derived from fully public GitHub activity that anyone can observe. The advantage is in the systematic pipeline, most investors don't bother to compute rolling 14-day velocity across hundreds of orgs every week.
What tools find startups before they raise?
Purpose-built feeds include GitDealFlow, a free public API and MCP server built on this methodology. General databases such as Crunchbase and PitchBook confirm rounds after they become known; for pre-announcement discovery you need leading signals rather than listing databases.
What if I don't want to use a paid platform?
GitDealFlow's public API and MCP server are free in perpetuity. There's a paid Dashboard tier for filtering and bulk export, but the underlying signal data is not gated.
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