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

The famed scout programme from US VC firm Sequoia has launched in Europe. We meet the scouts.

Ada has ~100 “Ada Scouts” and 20 “Ada Angels,” each able to invest up to £50K in underrepresented entrepreneurs – resulting in 30% of Ada’s investments coming via scouts.

It takes a village to grow a startup, so Village Global is offering access to a deep network of top tech execs to lure founders to its seed fund. Today, Village Global announced it’s raised $100 million for that fund that was first unveiled in September.

Founders are extraordinarily busy, even for their own investors. A decade ago, they might have had relationships with a handful of VC partners as they scaled their businesses and raised additional rounds of capital.

If you are an African graduate, professional and entrepreneur trying to get into venture capital, here are five African VC fellowships you should consider joining.

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.

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.