Description

General

Subscribe to Fully Vested at FullyVested.co or through your podcast app of choice.

Links about VC scout programs

General stuff about deal sourcing

• LP Corner: How VCs Source Deals
• OpenLP: When Money Isn’t Enough: How to Distinguish Yourself as a VC in a Crowded Market

What Scout Programs Are

• Scout Programmes (#7 edition of The Rookie VC newsletter, published on Substack by Ulysse Laroche)
  • Super good
• Established VCs turn to "super angels" to grow their network (Kia Kokalitcheva for Axios)
• Founder Investors & Scout Programs (Elad Gil on his blog)
• A view from the other side: “VCs are exploiting underrepresented people to solve their diversity problems” (Anisah Osman Britton in Sifted.eu)

Examples of Scout Programs At Established Firms

• Sequoia Capital
  • Sarah Lacy's 2012 article about Sequoia's scouting program is super good. It explains the strategy of spinning up LLCs for scouts.
  • Connie Loizos's 2019 article for TC is also very good.
• Canaan Partners
• Village Global
• A16Z
• Upfront Ventures
• Lightspeed Venture Partners (This year focusing on bringing together people from Black, Latinx, Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities)
• Accel
• Founders Fund
• Index Ventures
• Spark Capital
• First Round Capital

VC Scout Programs Today

• Indie.vc has a wide scouting program. The firm also launched what it calls a Cub Scouting program.
• Spearhead.co basically gives founders a $1M "search fund" they deploy into startups of their choosing.
• Cleo Capital, launched by former Sequoia scout Sarah Kunst, has a scout program primarily comprised of women in business

About The Co-Hosts

• Jason D. Rowley is a researcher and writer at Golden.com. He volunteers with startup outreach for the open-source community and sends occasional newsletters from Rowley.Report.
• Graham C. Peck is a Venture Partner with Cultivation Capital and additionally helps companies build technology development teams in partnership with Brightgrove and other technology development organizations.