Sifted found nine such programmes founded in Europe. They range from a few days to a few weeks, from free to thousands of euros.

Spearhead announced today that it has raised $100 million for its fourth fund. The basic outline of the program remains the same, but what’s changed is what happens after the formal Spearhead program has finished.

Dorm Room Fund, a venture capital operation that launched to invest in student-led startups, has raised a new $10.4 million fund, per SEC filings. The filing marks Dorm Room Fund’s largest fund to date, and its first that appears to include investors beyond First Round Capital, the firm that first launched the student-focused operation in 2012.

The article confirms that Spain has a number of scouts working for top Silicon Valley and European funds (Sequoia, Accel, EQT, Index, etc.), though many keep a low profile

Venture Capital firms, like Sequoia Capital, have been using a secretive network of so-called “scouts” to funnel money to promising start ups while avoiding the publicity that an investment from a big-name VC firm can bring, according to a report Friday in the Wall Street Journal.

Sequoia Capital has funneled millions of dollars to scores of well-connected entrepreneurs and academics, who invest and look for ideas.

VC review platform Landscape thinks it's come up with the scout programme to rule them all: a "scout-as-a-service" marketplace.

It started as First Round Capital’s experiment. After all, founder Josh Kopelman had started his first company, Infonautics, while he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Partner Hayley Barna had started Birchbox while still at Harvard Business School.