Week 1, Learn · Day 7 of 30
Day 7: The composite + the fast version
Six signals → one score → 350+ orgs in 4 seconds.
Day 7 in one paragraph: The composite is the framework. A startup scoring 5/6 with sustained acceleration over 14 days closes within 21-47 days about 38% of the time, roughly 5x the base rate from the SSRN panel. You will spend about five minutes, end with a concrete artifact, and the whole curriculum stays free at this URL permanently.
Where this day sits in the 30
Week 1 teaches the six atomic signals one at a time, each on the org you picked on day one. Day 7 of 30 sits 23% of the way through, in week 1, learn, one of four one-week phases. This day also carries a bonus exercise for anyone with extra time. Everything in this challenge is built from public GitHub signals, the same data that powers the weekly deal-flow feed, and the day's lesson is worth roughly €297 in equivalent consulting time by the anchoring we use across the curriculum.
Yesterday
Yesterday you learned the last of the six atomic signals. Today they assemble.
Why this signal matters
The composite is the framework. A startup scoring 5/6 with sustained acceleration over 14 days closes within 21-47 days about 38% of the time, roughly 5x the base rate from the SSRN panel.
The 5-minute exercise
- 1Commit velocity ratio > 1.3 → +1
- 2Top contributor < 50% AND ≥4 contributors with 10+ commits → +1
- 3Dependents graph has >50 external dependents → +1
- 4README updated in last 60 days with substantive diff → +1
- 53+ new repos in last 30 days, looking like platform components → +1
- 6PRs closed ÷ Issues opened (last 30d) > 1.5 → +1
What you’re filtering for
Score 5 of 6 = strong fundraise-precursor profile. Score 6 of 6 with 14-day sustained acceleration = ~38% close-within-47-days rate (vs ~7% base rate).
Edge case
A startup scoring 6/6 on a single repo but the org-level reading is 2/6, that's a single product break-out inside an otherwise quiet org. Different bet than an org-wide acceleration. Read both layers.
Bonus
Manual version takes ~30 minutes per startup. Monitoring 30 startups manually is a 15-hour week. The fast version runs the same six signals plus a seventh (signal-type classification, hiring burst vs infra buildout vs deploy spike vs framework migration) across 350+ orgs continuously. Same framework, different scale.
Tomorrow
Week 1 closes today: you can now read the framework. Week 2 starts tomorrow, applying the composite to three real candidates from your own pipeline.
Checkpoint, Week 1 closes today
You’re 23% through. The full curriculum is permanent at every /challenge/<slug> URL - bookmark this page if you want to revisit the procedure later.
Common questions about day 7
- How long does day 7 take?
- About five minutes of hands-on work against the org you picked on day one. The reading adds another two or three. If you are short on time the exercise alone still delivers the day's point.
- Do I need any tools or paid data for the composite + the fast version?
- No. Every exercise in the challenge runs on public GitHub data and a browser. The feed that automates the same checks is available, but the curriculum itself is deliberately tool-free so the habit lands before the tooling.
- What if I miss a day?
- Every day is permanent at its own URL, so you can pick up exactly where you stopped. The sequence matters, each day builds on the previous one's artifact, but the pace is yours. Many people run the 30 days across six or seven weeks instead of four.
Curriculum: /challenge · Methodology: /methodology · Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6606558