Recently, our co-founder Jacob Graubæk Houlberg joined Seb Johnson on the Scaling Europe podcast to talk about how early-stage funds can identify new investment opportunities before they become obvious.
Scaling Europe brings together some of Europe’s best builders and investors to discuss what is happening across European tech, so it was a great setting to dig into how startup sourcing is changing and why we are building Evertrace.
Why the best opportunities are invisible early
The hardest part of early-stage investing is that the most promising founders are usually invisible at exactly the moment they matter most.
They are incorporating companies quietly, pushing code to GitHub, registering domains, filing patents, and building in stealth, all long before any public announcement or fundraise.
The signals exist. The problem is that they are scattered across dozens of unconnected sources, and thousands of new founders appear every month across Europe alone.
For most funds, that means the best opportunities are discovered far too late.
From network-driven to signal-driven discovery
For decades, venture capital has relied on networks, introductions, and inbound deal flow to find new startups.
During the conversation, Jacob explained how that is beginning to shift from network-driven discovery toward signal-driven discovery.
Instead of functioning as a static database, Evertrace is built more like a real-time feed. It connects fragmented signals across trade registries, GitHub, patents, domains, and research activity, and surfaces what changed from yesterday to today. Investors check in each morning to see which new founders and companies have appeared overnight.
The goal is simple: help investors detect founders and companies earlier than traditional venture workflows allow.
Helping early-stage funds move first
For early-stage funds, being early is the whole game.
Jacob and Seb talked about how systematic, data-driven sourcing lets a small fund punch above its weight, spotting new investment opportunities the moment the first signals appear rather than waiting for a company to land in their inbox.
As the number of founders keeps climbing, that infrastructure only becomes more valuable. More founders means more signal, and more signal means a greater need for a system that can filter and prioritise what actually matters.
What we discussed
In the episode, Jacob and Seb covered a range of topics, including:
- how early signals often appear months before a company becomes visible or raises
- why sourcing is fundamentally a data problem
- how Evertrace connects fragmented signals across trade registries, GitHub, patents, and domains into a single feed
- why the platform is built as a real-time feed rather than a traditional database
- how early-stage funds can use data to identify new investment opportunities first
- how Evertrace has grown to more than 200 VC clients with a lean team
Watch the episode
If you are interested in how early-stage investors actually discover startups today, this conversation is well worth a watch.
A big thank you to Seb Johnson for the great questions and for having us on Scaling Europe.
You can watch the full episode below.
The founder detection engine for VCs
AI-powered founder detection with unmatched coverage.
Book a demo