For angels, scouts & seed funds
See which startups are heating up before they raise.
I read their GitHub. You see them first.
I watch what 4,200+ startups are quietly building and flag the ones taking off — weeks before the round or the press.
✓ Free — I cover the compute ✓ Unsubscribe in one click ✓ One email, every Sunday
Covering the fast-growing software startups everyone's about to fight over — and more. See a real issue first →
Why it's good for you
What you get by seeing it first
Get in early & cheap
Reach the founder before the round fills up and the price jumps.
Be first to the founder
Talk to them before the crowd shows up — while they still have time for you.
No hard work for you
I read the engineering signal and tell you why it's hot — in plain English, a few minutes a week.
Receipts, not testimonials
The same signal lit up weeks before these rounds.
Each of these showed the engineering-acceleration pattern in public before the round hit the press — recognizable, venture-scale, and auditable, not a name you take on faith. To count in the panel, the signal had to predate the event by at least 30 days.
Cursor · AI dev tools
Their engineers were shipping far more code, and more developers piled in — all in the open through 2024, ahead of the priced round.
→ $2.6B Series B · Thrive Capital
Supabase · Dev infrastructure
A steady climb in code shipped, plus a relentless week-after-week release rhythm, was the leading signal.
→ $80M Series C
Resend · Email infra
A public engineering buildout accelerated ahead of the Series A announcement.
→ $18M Series A · Sequoia
Plus ~70 more — Anthropic, Pinecone, Groq, Clerk, Linear — in the public panel behind the 219 documented fundraises. See the method and the full ledger →
Built by The Data Nerd
I kept hearing about the great ones a week too late. So I stopped waiting for the intro.
I'm one person — people call me The Data Nerd. I'm an engineer who writes the occasional small angel cheque, not a fund, so I'm never racing you for a deal.
For ten years I wrote those cheques out of Athens, not San Francisco. No partner network, no demo-day badge, and honestly I'm useless in a room — I'd rather read a commit history than work a conference. So I heard about the good companies the same way you do: a week too late, after the round was full and the price had jumped. That part actually stung.
Then in 2024 I watched a small fintech team I almost emailed — three founders, one repo, no press, no warm intros circulating. Two weeks later their engineers were suddenly shipping far more: commit activity tripled, new contributors piled in, new infrastructure appeared out of nowhere. Three weeks after that, a $4M Series A led by a top-tier fund. Every clue had been sitting in the open on GitHub (the website where engineers keep their work) the whole time. I couldn't un-see it.
So I built a tool that reads that trail across 4,200+ startups every week and hands me the names quietly taking off — in plain words, no code. Now I send those names to you.
And yes — I'm just one nerd reading GitHub. That's the point: no committee, no spin, no agenda. The read is fully automated, it ships on a schedule, and the whole method is published on SSRN with an open dataset — so it never depends on me having a good week. The full origin story, the six parables, and the open methodology →
- What it watches: which company teams are suddenly building a lot more
- What you get: a name, what it does, and a simple reason it's taking off
- What you do: reach out early, while it's still quiet
Before you trust a stranger's email
Three flaws I have on purpose.
I didn't set out to start a movement. I noticed something true and felt I had to publish it. So here's the deal up front — the parts of me that'll annoy you, before you find them out the hard way.
I'm slow to reply.
Two reply batches a day, never inside the hour. No DMs. If you need a vendor on Slack at 11pm, I'm not him.
No calls until you've subscribed.
I'd rather write you a long, honest email than burn your hour on a discovery call you didn't need.
No face, no voice, no name.
You'll never see me on a podcast or a LinkedIn selfie. The handle is what lets me say true things about how deal-flow really works.
“Trust the math, not me.”
If this signal needed a charismatic founder to make it land, it wouldn't be a signal. That's why I stay anonymous: the methodology is the protagonist, and I'm just the one who writes it down. If I'm right, the data carries the argument — not my face.
Here's the deal between us: you don't read code — that's my job, not yours. You read people, markets, and timing. I read the commit history so you never have to borrow an engineer's afternoon to know who's real. You make the call and look early in front of your team; I stay behind the regression. If you'd rather run the analysis yourself, that's useful to know too — it probably means I'm the wrong nerd for your thesis, and I'd rather you find out now.
Verify the claim in three clicks
Methodology
Read how the signal works, what the SSRN panel measured, and why the lead-time claim exists.
Comparison
See where GitDealFlow fits versus other alternative-data tools when timing matters more than noise.
Sample report
See the exact output shape — names, signals, and plain-English notes — before you sign up for anything.
The one idea this all rests on
GitDealFlow isn't a better database. It's a different signal.
Databases and warm intros tell you a company is hot once it already is. Engineering activity tells you before. Believe that one thing, and every other way of sourcing is just waiting for the news to break.
Code is more honest than copy. The deck lags the code by 21 to 47 days — and that gap is your whole edge.
The old way
- You wait for the warm intro — and so does everyone else.
- PitchBook and Crunchbase list the round after it's announced.
- By the time it's “obvious,” the price has jumped and the allocation is gone.
The new opportunity
- You see how hard they're building — the work that happens before any announcement.
- You see acceleration 21 to 47 days before the round or the press.
- You're early by default, not by luck.
It's not an upgrade to your database. It's the signal that sits underneath it.
Proof, not promises
I'd rather hand you the receipts than a wall of testimonials.
This is early and privacy-first, so you won't find a logo parade or paid quotes here. You get the thing most tools never show: the actual track record, public and auditable.
4,200+
startups watched out in the open, every single week.
219
fundraises the engineering signal preceded, documented in the SSRN research panel.
21–47 days
median head start before the round — measured in the data, not promised in a pitch.
Open
dataset and methodology on SSRN and Zenodo — check every call yourself.
Why investors use it
You see it earlier
Engineering activity moves before the round and before the press. You reach founders while the window is still quiet, not after the deal is crowded.
You stay the investor, not the analyst
No code, no dashboards to babysit, no borrowing an engineer's afternoon. Each name arrives with its sector, stage, and a plain-English reason it's accelerating — the kind of line you can drop in front of your deal team and sound early, not technical.
It's provable, not a black box
No “trust me.” The lead-time claim is backed by an SSRN paper, a public dataset, and an open methodology you can read in full.
“But can I actually win the deal?”
Seeing it early is exactly how a small check beats a big fund.
Here's the fear: you spot a company early, then a brand-name fund takes the allocation anyway. But that only happens after a round is hot. The whole point of a head start measured in weeks is that you get there before there's a round to fight over.
When you reach a founder while they're still heads-down shipping, you're not bidding against ten term sheets. You're the one investor who noticed before the press did. That's when a founder takes the call, remembers your name, and saves you room when the round opens.
Week 0
The tool flags the signal. You reach out while the founder still has time to talk.
Weeks 1–4
You build the relationship while you're the only investor in the room. No competition, no noise.
Round opens
You're already in. Better price, real allocation, no scramble against ten other term sheets.
Who it's for
Built for investors who want to be early, not analytical.
Solo angels, scouts, and seed funds who source in specific sectors and want to reach founders while the round is still quiet. You don't read code — and you don't want to. You read people, markets, and timing, and you'd rather hand the engineering read to the nerd who does it for a living. This is built for you.
You care about asymmetric upside, but you don't want to spend nights digging through raw GitHub activity or another bloated VC database. You want the read done for you — and a clean reason you can repeat to your partners.
You want a signal worth acting on, explained in plain English, before the deal becomes obvious.
There's a name for that investor: the First Mover — early on the signal, not on luck. If that's you, this is who I built it for.
Where it works — and where it doesn't
The signal reads public engineering activity, so it's sharpest in dev tools, AI/ML, infrastructure, data, and open-source-leaning startups. Deep-stealth or fully closed-source companies show up late, or not at all. If that's your whole thesis, this isn't your edge — and I'd rather tell you now than waste your Sundays.
Where this takes you
Your next six months as the investor who's early on purpose.
Not a promise of returns — I can't make those and I won't. This is the habit you build, and where it usually leaves you. The rhythm is the whole relationship.
This Sunday
Five names land. You read them in 90 seconds, flag the one in your lane, and close the laptop. Your first early read, done before coffee.
Month 1
You've sent three “saw your commits” emails while everyone else was still waiting for the intro. Maybe none reply yet. That's fine — the reps are the point.
Month 3
Two founders now know you as the one who reached out before the round existed. That reputation compounds — every early email makes the next warm intro land easier.
Month 6
Getting the engineering read before everyone else is just how you source now — no code, ever. You've also watched me get a few calls wrong in public, which is exactly why you trust the ones I get right.
None of that asks you to read code, turn into a quant, or trust me on faith. It asks one thing: be on the list when this Sunday's five names send.
How it works
Three steps. No code, no quant work.
I read the signal
I watch what 4,200+ startups are building out in the open: how fast they're shipping, how many engineers are pitching in, and the new projects they start. The whole engine lives on signals.gitdealflow.com.
I flag what's accelerating
The tool surfaces the startups breaking out in your sectors, before the round or the press, each with a plain-English note on why.
You move first
Open the board, pick the names in your lane, and reach the founders while the window is still quiet.
The free Sunday Signal
Five startups quietly accelerating on GitHub — in your inbox before the round.
Every Sunday I send you five names the tool flagged that week — each with a plain-English note on why it's moving and the sector it's in. It's the early read you'd otherwise pay an analyst to do by hand, or piece together from data tools that run thousands a year.
Running it every week costs me real compute — GitHub data, models, infrastructure. I cover that so you don't. No card now, no card ever.
Here's exactly what hits your inbox, every Sunday
- 5 startups accelerating on GitHub this week, ranked — the ones quietly breaking out
- A plain-English note on why each one is moving — you never read a line of code
- The sector and stage for each, so you only spend time in your lane
- A 21-to-47-day head start — the names before the round or the press
- Read it in 90 seconds, one click to unsubscribe, and you keep every issue you got
A junior analyst doing this read by hand is a €60k+ hire. The data tools that come close run €5,000–€30,000 a year. You pay nothing — I cover the compute so the read reaches a thousand investors who tell five friends, instead of a hundred who can expense it.
I don't show cherry-picked winners — I pre-register
The 10 names I locked on May 4, 2026
Graded in the open · July 3Ten real companies that showed the take-off pattern that week — unfiltered and un-cherry-picked. Some you'll recognize, some you won't: showing you the raw list before the outcomes is the whole point. It's the same pattern that flagged Cursor and Supabase before their rounds (above) — shown here live and ungraded. On July 3 I grade every one in public: raised, acquired, or nothing. No edits, no hindsight, no quietly dropping the misses.
- 1. Zapply Jobs · HR Tech · Pre-seed
- 2. AtroCore · Enterprise SaaS · Seed
- 3. Ever · HR Tech · Growth
- 4. Kanvas · Enterprise SaaS · Seed
- 5. Janssen / Gluu · Cybersecurity · Growth
- 6. metasfresh · Enterprise SaaS · Growth
- 7. Bagisto · E-commerce infra · Growth
- 8. Devcode · Enterprise SaaS · Series A/B
- 9. Third Culture Software · Healthcare · Series A/B
- 10. Lonero · Enterprise SaaS · Seed
Public and timestamped at signals.gitdealflow.com/predicted. Naming a company means its public building activity matched my pattern — not that it is raising. Not investment advice.
Subscribe and watch me be right or wrong, in real time.
The board shows everything, all at once. The Sunday email is the read done for you: the five names that broke out this week, ranked, with the plain-English why, pushed to you — so you never have to remember to check.
This Sunday's five are already locked. The only way to see them is to be on the list when it sends.
Drop your email and check your inbox to confirm — then the five names land this Sunday morning.
Read every Sunday by angels, scouts, and seed funds sourcing before the crowd.
✓ One email, every Sunday ✓ Unsubscribe in one click ✓ Keep every issue you got