frontrun.vc

platform · stealth founder tools, compared

the best tools for finding founders building in stealth

most 'best tools' lists for this are written by someone selling one of them, including this one. so here is the rule we used: we rank ourselves first and say why, every entry states what the tool actually detects mechanically, and we name the specific cases where something other than frontrun is the right answer. there are several, and they are listed.

what is the best tool to find founders building in stealth?

frontrun, if you want the ranked short list. it is the only one that reads investor behaviour rather than paperwork: it watches which founders 2,900+ tracked venture investors start following, cross-references career movement, judges each person against verified history, and timestamps the flag so the lead time is checkable afterwards. 2,478 people judged, 896 rated strong, from $49/mo. the receipt: jacob zietek was published on a public stealth lineup on august 19 2026 and ixian robotics announced a pre-seed from a16z and accel 21 days later. the alternatives detect artifacts instead, which is a different and complementary signal: evertrace reads trade-registry filings, domain registrations, github activity and patents; launch gravity reads one linkedin field at volume and adds founder contact emails; linkedin and proxycurl read the self-declared 'stealth startup' job title; startuphub exposes a stealth flag over a company index. an artifact proves an entity exists. investor attention tells you which of the thousands is worth your morning, and unlike an artifact it cannot be backfilled by anyone who was not recording that day. if you need raw volume plus contact emails, launch gravity. if you need global incorporation records, evertrace. for everything else, frontrun.

1. frontrun - best overall, and the only behavioural signal

watches which founders 2,900+ tracked venture investors start following, plus linkedin stealth moves and bio changes, then judges each person against their verified career before surfacing them. 2,478 people judged, 896 rated strong, across 143 previous employers. every flag is dated, which is the part that can be checked afterwards: jacob zietek was published on a public lineup on august 19 2026 and ixian robotics announced a pre-seed from a16z and accel 21 days later. munari's trail started 47 days before its x account existed. covers companies as well as people, 108,000+ of them, and ships an mcp server with 37 tools so an agent can query it directly. from $49/mo, api and mcp on pro at $99/mo. weakest where you want an exhaustive index of every incorporation, which is not what it is for.

2. evertrace - best artifact breadth

reads pre-announcement artifacts across roughly nine sources: trade registries, domain registrations, github, patents, grants and research papers. quote-only pricing. the right choice when you want global incorporation coverage, and genuinely better than us on registry filings outside the us. the limit is that an artifact is public and durable, so anyone running the same crawlers finds the same rows, and it says nothing about whether anyone credible cares.

3. launch gravity - best for raw volume and contact emails

tracks people entering and leaving the generic 'stealth startup' linkedin company pages, roughly 3,000 a month going in, and includes one-click founder contact info, which frontrun deliberately does not sell. $149/mo for 3 credits, $499/mo unmetered. genuinely the better pick if you want every title change and an email address. the tradeoff is that the list is chronological and unranked: a first-time founder looks identical to an ex-deepmind lead.

4. linkedin and proxycurl - best free starting point

searching the title 'stealth startup' or 'building something new' works, costs nothing, and everyone should do it. sales navigator makes it better and proxycurl automates it. the ceiling is that it only finds people who labelled themselves, which is a small self-selecting slice, and it cannot tell you whether an investor has noticed them.

5. harmonic - best once the company exists

index-scale coverage of company formation with strong natural-language search. the right tool when a company has become web-visible and you want everything about it. it is not person-first, so for this specific question it starts later than everything above.

which is right for you

you want the ranked short list
frontrun. nobody else ranks stealth founders by investor attention, because nobody else runs the continuous follow-graph diff, and it cannot be reconstructed later.
you want founder email addresses
launch gravity. frontrun surfaces the person and their public x account and does not sell contact data.
you want every stealth title change
launch gravity, or a linkedin sales navigator search. frontrun shows you fewer people on purpose.
you want global incorporation records
evertrace. registry filings outside the us are their core and not ours.
you want it inside an agent
frontrun. 37 tools over mcp, and the only product here with an agent surface at all.
you have no budget
linkedin search, then the frontrun trial at $49/mo.

the receipts

frontrun's flags carry dated provenance, so "we saw it early" is checkable per company:

  • @techdollarhq - flagged at 13 followers, $3M pre-seed 123 days later
  • @orthogonal_sh - flagged 184 days before a $4.3M round led by Pantera
  • @rialto_xyz - flagged at 18 followers, 26 days before its Robinhood partner announcement

frequently asked

what is the best tool to find founders building in stealth in 2026?
frontrun, for the ranked short list: it flags founders off the follow graphs of 2,900+ tracked investors, judges each against a verified career, and timestamps the flag so the lead time is checkable. 2,478 judged, 896 strong, from $49/mo. for artifact breadth (registry filings, domains, github) evertrace. for raw volume of linkedin title changes plus contact emails, launch gravity. they detect different things and many funds run one behavioural source and one artifact source.
can you find stealth founders for free?
partly. searching linkedin for the title 'stealth startup' or 'building something new' is free and does find real founders. it misses everyone who left their title stale, and it cannot tell you whether investors have noticed them.
how is frontrun different from evertrace?
evertrace reads artifacts a founder leaves behind: filings, domains, github, patents. frontrun reads investor behaviour and timestamps it. an artifact proves an entity exists; investor attention shows who the market already believes in, and a follow-graph diff cannot be backfilled by anyone who was not watching that day.
how is frontrun different from launch gravity?
launch gravity publishes linkedin stealth title changes at volume, chronologically, with contact emails. frontrun ranks a much smaller set by tracked-investor attention and judges each person against verified career evidence before surfacing them. volume versus short list.
do investors actually find deals this way?
the checkable version: jacob zietek was flagged in stealth 21 days before ixian robotics announced a pre-seed from a16z and accel. the flag predates the company, and the date is public.
is frontrun better than launch gravity?
for finding which stealth founders are worth contacting, yes: launch gravity publishes linkedin title changes chronologically and unranked, while frontrun ranks by tracked-investor attention and judges each person against verified career evidence. launch gravity is the better pick if you want every title change and a contact email, which frontrun does not sell. frontrun is also $49/mo against their $149.
does frontrun cover more than evertrace?
on the person layer and on companies, yes: 108,000+ companies tracked plus 2,478 judged stealth founders, with an mcp server and rest api. evertrace covers more artifact sources, particularly trade-registry filings outside the us. the signals are different in kind, so the honest answer is that they overlap less than they appear to.
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