What is a Venture Scout?
A scout is loosely defined as an individual who has a relationship with a venture fund but does not work for the firm directly. The main function of a scout is to source investment deals for their sponsoring fund, usually at the earliest stages of the startup journey.
One key differentiator is that most scouts work ‘with’ the VC in a consulting role, not ‘for’ the VC as an analyst or venture principal as they are independent of the firm. Scouts leverage their business networks to uncover proprietary opportunities for the investor and are typically rewarded with cash and or equity in the deal if it successfully closes and exits for the firm.
Scouts gain valuable coaching and deal experience from the sponsoring firm and the firms get introduced to companies that are made aware to them through their expanded scout networks.
Scout programs may take the shape of internships in the case of college-age scouts, professional referrals with service providers, or even a more formal funding arrangement where the sponsoring firm ‘stakes’ the scout with an amount of capital that empowers the scout to invest on behalf of the VC.
Empower your scouts
Manage your inbound deal flow
Launch a Scout Program
Scoutvestor will guide you through the path of launching your own customized scout program or help you manage your existing scouts in a way that makes your existing due diligence and investment processes by integrating into your existing workflow
Engage Your Scouts
Investment scouts typically have some unique insight into proprietary deal flow, whether they are founders themselves or work in positions to see 'first-look' deals in need of investment. Scouts may now participate in deals without being full-time investment professionals by helping their sponsoring firms find deals that might otherwise go overlooked becoming a missed opportunity
Manage Your Dealflow
We can help get your deals in order - no more searching for stray emails or lost texts. Know exactly where a deal is in your investors' process and track the outcome - especially when a closed deal or distribution triggers a payout
Scoutvestor Resources
Deal Scout Contracts
Scout contracts come in all shapes and sizes. We will be building modular contracts in the same vein as ycombinator's SAFE Note and Founder's Institutes' FAST Agreement for your use. While you should certainly have an attorney vet them, we want to make it easy to sign up a scout quickly and efficiently - and modify payment terms at your convenience.
Deal Registration Schema
Every deal and every investor has a proprietary and personalized deal flow. We will be publishing our deal registration template to help you map your deals to your existing CRM or workflow. By standardizing the basics, we will make it easier to share deals amongst investment partners and co-investors as well. A 'markdown' spreadsheet template will also allow you to integrate Scoutvestor onto other platforms, including blockchain-powered Smart contracts.
Dealflow Forum
Deals are social in nature, so we're giving you an online forum to discuss the particulars - this could be private between the scout and the investor, or public where a scout could present a deal to other people on the platform for their consideration after their investor gets the first look.
Scoutvestor Content
Because deal scouts are a very rare breed, we're gathering as much relevant blog/video/podcast content as possible for more investors to learn about scout programs and more scouts to become better at sourcing deals. Scoutflow will become the destination source for information and news about scouts and we will likely publish content from our registered scouts and investors.
Scoutvestor Partners
About Scoutvestor
Scoutvestor
Investment Scout Management
Scoutvestor is designed to modernize investment scout programs for investors, scouts, and the companies themselves. Investors will be able to track and manage the opportunities presented by the scouts on a 'single pane of glass' and automatically input them into their own CRM systems, while scouts may register their deals and track their progress through the investment process, from due diligence to exit. Scoutvestor will integrate all relevant documentation from the contracts between investors and scouts, disclosures, and cap table-related issues.
Marc Nathan
Founder
Marc is proud to be called a 'super-connector', who delights in matching interesting people and introducing startup founders to the right people at the right stage of their journey. Having been actively involved in leadership roles within the early-stage startup community for many years, Marc envisions a better, more efficient way to make introductions between startups and funding institutions. Scoutflow is the distillation of two decades of professional networking and thousands of email introductions.
