every fund says they "see everything early." mechanically, there are only a few ways anyone hears about a company before its round is announced. here they are, ranked by how early they actually are - with receipts on the earliest one.

the classic channels (and their timing)

1. warm intros - the founder's network reaches the fund. early, but gated: you only see what your network sees.
2. accelerator demo days - yc, colosseum, alliance. early-ish, but every fund watches the same stage at the same time. zero edge, maximum competition.
3. databases - pitchbook, crunchbase, harmonic. comprehensive, but their inputs are registrations, websites, filings, announcements. by definition the company is already visible.
4. content signal - a founder tweets "i'm building something new." real, but it requires the founder to announce themselves. the quietest, most competitive deals never do.

the channel most funds can't see: investor behavior

before a gp ever wires money, they do something observable: they start following the founder and the company on X. one investor following a 30-follower account is noise. five tier-1 investors following the same 30-follower account in the same week is signal - and it happens months before the round becomes public.

frontrun tracks the follow graphs of 1,000+ venture investors continuously and timestamps the moment they converge on a company. because every flag has recorded provenance, the "before the round" claim is checkable, company by company:

• @techdollarhq - flagged feb 23 at 13 followers. 123 days later: a $3M pre-seed from no limit and reforge.
• @orthogonal_sh - flagged 184 days before its $4.3M round led by Pantera.
• @impeccable_ai - flagged 75 days before a seed led by a16z.
• @rialto_xyz - flagged jun 5 at 18 followers, 26 days before its Robinhood chain launch partner announcement. not even a fundraise - partnership signal leaks the same way.
• @weaverobotics - flagged ~4.5 months before their home robot launched.

the pattern generalizes: investors act before announcements, and their actions are public. almost nobody watches them systematically, because doing it right means diffing 1,000+ follow lists continuously and keeping provenance - infrastructure, not browsing.

why follower count is the filter, not the signal

a company at 40 followers with one random follow is nothing. a company at 40 followers where the one follow is a fund gp with a fresh $75M vehicle is a meeting. quality of the follower beats quantity every time - which is why raw "trending" lists from social data vendors don't work for sourcing. the graph has to be curated to investors whose follows are load-bearing.

doing this yourself (manual version)

• pick 50 investors whose judgment you trust. check their new follows weekly (X shows recent follows on profiles, inconsistently).
• when two or more follow the same sub-1k account, dig: bio, pinned tweet, founder, github. the story is usually one click deep.
• keep a log with dates. the lead-time math is your proof later.

that's the loop. it's also 10+ hours a week of tab management - which is the reason we automated it into daily reports, a live feed, and an api + mcp your agent can query.

faq

is this just for crypto? no - the tracked graph skews frontier tech, so ai, robotics, fintech, and payments signal is strong and growing. see startups by sector.

how early is the signal really? verified raises from flagged companies have run from 26 days to 6+ months of lead time. the receipts above are typical of the good cases, not cherry-picked averages - every flag date is recorded and checkable.

what does it cost to automate? frontrun pro is $99/mo with a 7-day free trial. a public slice of the signal is free on the trending page.

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