Seed Fund Sources 3 Deals in Q1 Through Signal-Based Sourcing

The Challenge

A seed fund with a strong thesis in developer tools and infrastructure was struggling with sourcing coverage. Their two GPs relied primarily on warm intros and accelerator demo days, which limited their deal flow to companies within their existing network. The analyst spent 15-20 hours per week scanning databases and reading newsletters, producing a spreadsheet of 30-40 companies per month. Most of these were already well-known to other funds by the time they surfaced. The fund was consistently seeing deals 2-3 months after competitors.

The Solution

ScoutedByTed was configured with two thesis profiles: developer tools (seed/pre-seed, hiring velocity and GitHub activity weighted heavily) and infrastructure software (seed through Series A, enterprise customer signals and compliance hiring weighted). Ted delivered 10 scored companies per day with signal breakdowns and thesis match explanations. The analyst redirected their time from database scanning to founder outreach and relationship building.

Results

• 3 investments closed in Q1 2026 from signal-sourced companies
• Average first-contact-to-term-sheet: 6 weeks (vs. 12 weeks previously)
• Sourcing coverage expanded from ~40 companies/month to 300+ scored companies/month
• Analyst time on sourcing logistics reduced from 15-20 hrs/week to 3-4 hrs/week
• 2 of 3 investments were companies the fund had never heard of through their network

Timeline: First email delivered within 48 hours. First signal-sourced meeting within 10 days.