How To Guides

Early-stage investing rewards people who act before information becomes public, but "act early" is useless advice without a process. These guides give you the process: where to look, what to count as evidence, and how to track deals from first sighting to close.

All three guides share one principle: use public data that leads the news cycle, not lags it. A startup's public GitHub activity, commit velocity, contributor growth, repository expansion, changes weeks before a round is announced. GitDealFlow reads that activity across 350+ startups and emails five names every Sunday, typically 21-47 days before the round hits the press.

Step-by-Step Guides

How to Find Pre-Seed Startups Before They Raise

A proven framework for discovering pre-seed startups using public data signals before funding announcements. The guide walks through screening accelerating engineering teams, verifying momentum on GitHub, and reaching out while the round is still being assembled, the window where access is easiest and terms are best.

How to Evaluate Startup Traction Without Revenue

Framework for assessing pre-revenue startup traction using non-financial signals. When there is no revenue to inspect, look at what the team is doing in public: how fast they commit, whether contributors are growing, and how the repository footprint is expanding, the same three signals GitDealFlow's published methodology uses.

How to Track VC Deals Using Public Data

Methods for tracking venture capital deals and valuations using publicly available data. The guide shows how to build a watchlist, follow engineering momentum over time, and correlate acceleration with eventual fundraising, a pattern documented in a research panel of 219 startup-period observations across 55 startups on SSRN.

How to Evaluate a Startup's Engineering Team

A four-step framework for evaluating an engineering team using public GitHub data: map the footprint, read velocity and contributor growth, check repository expansion, and cross-check with non-GitHub signals.

How to Source Startup Deals on GitHub

A step-by-step playbook for turning public engineering activity into a repeatable deal-sourcing channel: define your universe, watch for breakouts, qualify into a watchlist, and reach out before the round.

How to Build a Startup Watchlist

A four-step method to build, rank, track, and act on a startup watchlist, with a weekly review that turns momentum changes into outreach decisions.

How to Do Technical Due Diligence on a Startup

A six-step method for verifying execution, process, and team claims using public GitHub evidence before you invest, from footprint checks to red flags to the memo write-up.

The Common Thread: Engineering Momentum

Finding, evaluating, and tracking deals are three different jobs, but they all reduce to the same question: is this team's momentum real and is it accelerating? Public GitHub activity answers that question with evidence you can inspect yourself, and it is free to read.

Start with the free weekly digest to see the method in action: five names every Sunday, each verifiable on GitHub, no credit card required, one-click unsubscribe. When you are ready for deeper tracking, the Dashboard and Insider tiers layer on more. The methodology behind all of it is published on SSRN under CC BY 4.0 with an open dataset, so you are never asked to trust a black box. Each guide on this page is written to be practical: read one, follow its steps for a week, and you will have a working routine before the next digest arrives.

Explore by topic

All Playbooks

The complete step-by-step library: sourcing, diligence, tracking, and workflow guides.