Follow-On Investment Checklist
Follow-on investments are where most venture returns are made. Use this checklist to decide whether to double down on a portfolio company's next round.
Performance since initial investment: Did they hit the milestones from the original thesis? Engineering velocity still strong or accelerating (GitDealFlow)? Revenue/users growing as planned?
Round dynamics: Is the round oversubscribed (good signal) or struggling (bad signal)? Is the lead investor credible? Is the valuation reasonable for the traction?
Portfolio context: How much dry powder do you have? Is this company a top-3 portfolio candidate? What's your ownership if you follow on vs. if you don't?
Conviction check: Has your conviction increased, decreased, or stayed flat since the initial investment? What would need to be true for you to pass on this follow-on?
How to Use This Checklist
A checklist earns its place when every line maps to evidence you can obtain. The items above follow the same public-data discipline behind GitDealFlow: 350+ startup GitHub organizations tracked across 15 sectors, refreshed weekly, with breakouts identified 21 to 47 days before the round. Where a line asks about engineering execution, the evidence is usually public: commit velocity, contributor concentration, and repository expansion, all confirmable from the repository itself rather than from a pitch deck.
Related Checklists
A practical read-through of Follow-On Investment Checklist: the dataset behind this page refreshes weekly across 350+ organizations and 15 sectors, and every figure shown traces to a public GitHub REST API pull. That matters for two reasons. Reproducibility: any number here can be re-derived from primary sources, which is the standard the published methodology sets for itself. Timeliness: engineering acceleration precedes announcements, so this page follows the data cadence rather than the news cycle, and the freshness endpoint always reports the exact pull date.
If Follow-On Investment Checklist is your entry point, the fastest next steps are fixed: skim the glossary for the three or four terms that anchor the topic, open the research dataset to see the raw weekly snapshots behind the summary numbers, and run one live query against the free momentum checker with a company you already know well. Seeing the signal fire on a familiar name is the quickest way to judge whether code-side sourcing belongs in your own workflow.
One caveat worth stating plainly on Follow-On Investment Checklist: momentum is a leading indicator, not a verdict. A repository can accelerate for reasons that never become a fundraise, and a quiet quarter does not mean a team is failing. The disciplined use of this page is as one input in a stack, a way to rank where scarce diligence time goes, and a way to notice change early. The methodology page documents every limitation, including the bot filter, the two-period confirmation rule, and the sectors where coverage is thinnest.
FAQ
When should I follow on?
When the company is executing well, your ownership is meaningful, and you have dry powder. The best follow-on candidates are top-decile performers where momentum is accelerating.
Should I always exercise pro-rata?
No. Pro-rata is a right, not an obligation. Pass on companies that are underperforming or where the round terms are unfavorable. Reserve capital for your best performers.
How much should I reserve for follow-ons?
50% of total capital. This lets you double down on 3-5 winners without running out of dry powder before the next vintage.