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.

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

Because many of the world's most successful tech companies were conceived by college students, recent graduates or dropouts, VCs and their limited partners have long tried to find a way to tap into that youthful creativity as early as possible.

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

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.

A feature on Monk’s Hill Ventures’ new Scouts Program in Southeast Asia.

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.