Playbooks
Operator how-tos for VC deal flow.
Reproducible playbooks for operator-investors, scouts, solo founders, and angels, each shipping a fixed time budget, a step-by-step rubric, and a clean handoff into the live product. Steal them, fork them, run them weekly.
- intermediate3h · 6 steps
How to source 10 dev-tool deals in a week (from GitHub trendlines)
A Tuesday-to-Friday playbook for sourcing ten qualified dev-tool deals using GitHub commit-velocity, contributor-influx, and star-detachment signals, no scraping required.
- beginner30m · 6 steps
How to read a GitHub trendline like a partner (not a star-counter)
A 30-minute playbook for interpreting GitHub momentum charts the way a seed-stage partner does, separating durable commit-velocity from one-week star spikes.
- beginner15m · 8 steps
How to qualify a 200-star repo in under 15 minutes
A repeatable 15-minute qualification rubric for the awkward middle, repos with 100-500 stars where you can't tell if it's a real company in the making or a side project.
- intermediate3h · 6 steps
How to find your first investable SaaS hiding on GitHub (solo-founder lens)
A weekend playbook for solo founders and angels, find one investable SaaS hiding on GitHub, qualify it, and decide whether you'd build the same thing or back the team building it.
- intermediate45m · 6 steps
How to spot a pre-seed round from commit-velocity (11 weeks early)
A signal-reading playbook that catches pre-seed rounds 8-14 weeks before they're announced, using only public GitHub commit-velocity, contributor influx, and infrastructure build-out signals.
- beginner2h · 6 steps
How to build a weekly deal-flow newsletter from GitHub signals (no scraping)
A reproducible Friday-morning playbook for shipping a weekly deal-flow newsletter to your investor or founder audience, sourced entirely from the public signals feed.
- intermediate2h · 6 steps
How to turn a trending repo into a warm intro (no cold-email)
A four-touch sequence that turns a trending GitHub repo into a warm intro to the maintainer, Twitter, GitHub issue, public reply, then DM, over 10 days.
- advanced4h · 7 steps
How to build a Dream-100 of GitHub orgs (community-led VC sourcing)
A community-led playbook for building a 100-org watchlist that produces compounding deal flow, modeled on the Dream-100 distribution discipline but applied to GitHub.
- beginner40m · 6 steps
How to Find Startups to Invest In (Before They Raise)
A step-by-step process to find startups to invest in before they raise, using GitHub commit-velocity and contributor-influx signals on top of your usual sourcing.
How these connect to the product
Playbook → tool → outcome.
Every playbook hands off to the right surface at the right step the free public signals feed for sourcing pulls, the methodology page for scoring questions, the free book for worked examples, and /firstlook for the live preview. Run a playbook end-to-end and you’ll naturally see which surface you want next.