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.

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 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.

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.

Ten years ago, Sequoia Capital began quietly encouraging founders of its portfolio companies to consider which of their founder friends they might like to get behind financially.

Lagos-based early-stage investment platform Microtraction has launched a bid to source more deals and identify “high-trajectory” founders.

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.