The methodology source. The 72-hour head-start. Two funds.

1. 1.Everything in Methodology Partnership (€68,000+ stack value)

   €68,000

   Sharp Tier baseline, custom panel construction trained on your portfolio, bespoke 50-org watchlist with monthly rebuild, white-labeled fund subdomain, quarterly synthetic founder talk, async methodology Q&A, quarterly anonymized case study, annual fund-only methodology brief. The full Methodology Partnership stack, included.

2. 2.Co-Development Access, submit signal hypotheses to the pipeline

   €36,000

   Your fund's analysts and engineers submit signal hypotheses (e.g., 'Does maintainer churn predict acquisition?') to the panel-construction pipeline. We run them, return the regression output, and integrate the validated ones into your fund-specific model. Approximately 24 senior-engineering hours per month at €150/hr equivalent.

3. 3.Pre-Publication SSRN Preview, 6 months early

   €20,000

   Read next year's SSRN successor paper six months before public release. Includes draft methodology, preliminary regression coefficients, and the new signal types being evaluated for the next public Dashboard. Vault funds also receive co-author byline credit on opt-in (anonymity-respecting, initials only, no fund logo).

4. 4.72-Hour Signal Head-Start over public Dashboard

   €18,000

   Every signal flagged by the regression is delivered to Vault funds 72 hours before it appears on the public Dashboard. Twelve flags per year on average; each flag has historically preceded fundraise announcements by 21-47 days. Conservative valuation: €1,500 per flag of additional time-to-act.

5. 5.Annual Methodology Summit, async, fund-branded artifacts

   €15,000

   Once a year, an 8-hour async methodology summit: Remotion-rendered keynote tracks, fund-branded artifact pack, downloadable workbook, and a private dataset cut. No live attendance, Vault funds consume the summit on their own time over 1-4 weeks. Equivalent live-summit attendance from comparable methodology consultancies: €15,000-€25,000/seat.

6. 6.Methodology Source Repo, fund-only fork license

   €60,000

   Private fork of the entire methodology source repository. Panel construction code, regression engine, signal-type definitions, ETL pipeline, and the build harness for the founder-talk generator. MIT-license to your fund only, fork, audit, run on your own infrastructure, integrate into your CRM. Re-distribution prohibited; all updates pushed to your fork for the duration of the engagement.

7. 7.Signal-of-the-Quarter Co-Investment Alerts

   €36,000

   Four times a year, the regression flags one signal as the 'Signal of the Quarter', the highest-conviction event of the period. Vault funds receive a dedicated written analysis (8-12 pages), the underlying GitHub deltas, and a co-investment readiness check (term sheet ready / IC-prep ready). Conservative valuation: €9,000 per quarter of risk-adjusted sourcing intelligence.

8. 8.Founding-rate lock, through end of 2028

   €49,997

   Vault rate goes to €99,997/yr after 2026. Funds joining in 2026 keep €49,997/yr through end of 2028 as long as the engagement stays active. The rate is structured to make Vault the right rung for funds that intend to license the methodology long-term, not for one-cycle subscribers.

Frequently asked

1. Why is the Vault €49,997 and not higher?

   Three anchors. (1) The Methodology Partnership is €14,997/yr, the Vault is roughly 3.3× that, with co-development access, pre-publication paper preview, 72-hour signal head-start, and the full methodology source repo as the differentiator. (2) Equivalent fund-as-research-partner engagements from name-brand methodology consultancies quote €100,000-€300,000/year. We undercut on margin, not on quality. (3) The cap of 2 funds in 2026 means the engagement stays sustainable at €49,997, beyond that, founder-engineering time becomes the bottleneck and the rate would need to climb to €100,000+ to maintain quality. The 2027 rate is €99,997/yr; 2026 funds keep €49,997 through end of 2028.

2. What does 'co-development access' mean concretely?

   Your fund's analysts and engineers submit signal hypotheses to a private intake form. Examples we've already validated for partner funds: 'Does maintainer churn (defined as top-3 contributor exit within 60 days) predict acquisition?' or 'Does cross-org commit overlap predict M&A within the next 12 months?' We run the hypothesis against the live panel, return regression output (coefficients, p-values, lead-time distribution, replication code), and integrate the statistically-significant ones into your fund's bespoke model. Approximately 24 senior-engineering hours per month, with no per-hypothesis cap below that ceiling.

3. How does the SSRN pre-publication preview work?

   We submit a successor preprint to SSRN annually (Q3 each year) building on the 219-startup panel from the original paper. Vault funds receive the draft six months before public release: methodology section, preliminary results, regression coefficients, and the new signal types being evaluated. Vault funds may submit one signal-type proposal that gets reviewed for inclusion in the public paper, with author-credit (initials-only) on opt-in. The pre-publication preview is shared under embargo, no public re-posting until the SSRN release date.

4. What does the 72-hour signal head-start actually deliver?

   Every signal flagged by the regression as decision-grade (~12/year on average) is pushed to Vault funds via webhook + email 72 hours before it appears on the public Dashboard. Each flag includes the underlying GitHub deltas, contributor-influx data, regression confidence, and a written interpretation. Public-Dashboard subscribers see the same flag 72 hours later. The lead time matters most when a flag fires on a venture-backed company that the consensus deal-flow tools have not yet indexed; in that window, a Vault fund can run diligence and reach out before the round closes.

5. What's the methodology source license, exactly?

   A private fork of the methodology repository, MIT-licensed to your fund only. You receive: the panel-construction code, the regression engine, signal-type definitions, the ETL pipeline that pulls public GitHub data, and the build harness for the founder-talk generator. You can fork, audit, run on your own infrastructure, modify, and integrate into your CRM. You cannot re-distribute, sublicense, or open-source the fork. Updates are pushed to your fork for the duration of the engagement; on engagement end, your fork stays read-only at the last delivered commit. The license is anonymity-preserving, there is no individual contributor attribution required from your end.

6. What disqualifies an application?

   (1) Reselling the methodology or data, Vault is single-fund license, not OEM. (2) Funds whose primary thesis is reselling alternative data. (3) Anything that would compromise the founder's anonymity (live in-person summit attendance, named-attribution publications featuring the founder by name, podcast appearances). (4) Funds requesting a per-deal sourcing fee or revenue share, the Vault is a flat-rate license, not a finders-fee structure. (5) Funds without an existing Sharp Tier or Methodology Partnership relationship are deprioritized, most Vault funds enter via Methodology Partnership for 6-12 months first. We turn down roughly half of net-new Vault applications on these grounds.

7. Is there anything above the Vault?

   Not as a productised tier. Funds with deeper requirements, multi-year exclusive license to the methodology, dedicated engineering time, custom signal-type R&D, or co-publication of a fund-specific industry report, should email signal at gitdealflow dot com for a scoped proposal. We have done this once, for a single fund, in 2025. The Vault is the right rung for the overwhelming majority of fund partnerships; the bespoke proposal exists for genuinely outlier needs.