frontrun.vc

platform · founders building in stealth

find founders building in stealth, before the company exists

by the time a stealth company has a name, a domain and a landing page, the round is usually already spoken for. the earlier object is the person. frontrun flags founders while they are still in stealth, by reading investor attention and career movement rather than waiting for a filing.

what is the best data source to find founders building in stealth?

there is no single perfect source, because a founder in stealth is deliberately leaving as little public footprint as possible. the practical split is between artifact sources and behavioral ones. artifact sources infer stealth from something filed or published: a linkedin title that says 'stealth startup' (linkedin, proxycurl), a trade-registry filing or domain registration or github spike (evertrace), or a company index with a stealth flag (startuphub). frontrun is the behavioral one: it watches which founders 2,900+ tracked venture investors start following, and which people move out of a named role into building, then judges each person against their verified career history before surfacing them. the difference matters because an artifact only tells you an entity exists. investor attention tells you who the market already believes in, and it is timestamped, so the lead time is checkable.

the person is the earlier object than the company

a stealth company has no x account, no website and no press, so every company-shaped database is blind to it by construction. the founder is not blind: they still have a career, a network, and investors who start paying attention. frontrun runs three detectors over the same investor graph - a bio change into founder language, a linkedin move into a stealth role, and investor convergence on a person with no company yet. 2,547 people have been flagged this way, 896 of them judged strong.

every flag is judged against a real career, not a job title

searching linkedin for the title 'stealth startup' returns people who chose to label themselves, which is a small and self-selected slice. it also returns anyone between jobs. frontrun judges each flagged person against verified evidence - linkedin history, personal site, publications - and returns a verdict of strong, worth a look, or weak, with the evidence attached. a strong verdict means elite credentials plus a confirmed building claim, not a keyword match.

the receipt

jacob zietek was flagged in stealth 21 days before ixian robotics announced a pre-seed from a16z and accel. the flag predates the company. that is the whole point of the lane: the date is checkable, and nobody can backfill a timestamp on investor behavior after the fact.

which is right for you

you want the person before the company
frontrun flags the founder while they are in stealth, then links them to the company when it appears. artifact-based sources start at the company.
you already track stealth on linkedin
keep doing it, and treat frontrun as the layer that tells you which of those people investors are already watching, and which ones survive a career check.
you are a solo gp or scout
this lane is on the $49 starter plan. the enterprise stealth products price in the thousands per month.
you want it inside an agent
the people lane is reachable through the mcp server (37 tools) and the rest api on pro at $99/mo, so a claude code or cursor agent can query it directly.

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 data source to find founders building in stealth?
it depends which signal you want. for artifacts, evertrace (registry filings, domains, github) and linkedin or proxycurl (self-declared stealth titles) are the standard answers. for investor behavior, frontrun - it flags founders in stealth off the follow graphs of 2,900+ tracked investors plus career movement, judges each person against verified history, and timestamps the flag so lead time is checkable. from $49/mo.
how do you find a founder before the company exists?
you stop looking for the company. frontrun watches three things: a person changing their x bio into founder language, a person moving into an unnamed or stealth role on linkedin, and tracked investors converging on a person who has no company yet. each hit is then judged against the person's verified career before it surfaces.
can you search linkedin for stealth founders?
yes, and you should, but it only finds people who labelled themselves. searching the title 'stealth startup' misses every founder who left their title blank or stale, and it cannot tell you whether investors are already paying attention. frontrun covers the ones who did not announce.
how is frontrun different from evertrace or harmonic?
evertrace reads pre-announcement artifacts - registry filings, domains, github activity, patents. harmonic indexes company formation at scale. frontrun reads investor attention on x and timestamps it, then judges the person's career. artifact signal proves an entity exists; behavioral signal shows who the market already believes in.
how much does it cost to track stealth founders?
the lane is included on frontrun's starter plan at $49/mo, with api and mcp access on pro at $99/mo. enterprise stealth-sourcing products are typically thousands per month.
see the signal before the round
7-day free trial · from $49/mo · API + MCP on Pro at $99/mo
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