Venture Scouting: How Scouts and Angels Source Deals Before the Databases

Scouts win by seeing deals before the databases do. This post explains what a scout actually does, how scout programs work, the sourcing stack, and where public engineering-acceleration data fits as a leading indicator that databases, by design, lag.

Key stats

3-6 weeks: Lead time of engineering acceleration over a fundraise announcement (the window databases cannot see)

350+: Startups in the weekly public panel (a discovery surface for scouts)

6: Read-only tools in the free MCP server (trending, sector search, lookup, summary, scout receipts, methodology)

References

[1] Engineering Acceleration as a VC Deal Flow Signal: SSRN

[2] VC Deal Flow Signal Methodology: GitDealFlow

[3] VC Deal Flow Signal MCP Server: npm