The VC scout program checklist for fund managers

The VC scout program checklist for fund managers

A scout program pays other people to see deals you cannot see yourself. It fits when your fund has a coverage gap it can name: a geography you do not live in, a technical community you are not part of, or a stage where founders decide who to talk to months before they raise.

It does not fit when your problem is conversion rather than coverage, when you have no capital set aside for the checks or the carry, or when nobody at the fund has time to acknowledge a scout's referral within a day and give it a real answer within the week. A network you cannot service will go quiet, and a quiet scout is worse than no scout, because you will believe you have coverage that you do not have.

Start by writing down the gap in one sentence, then the outcome you expect: qualified introductions per quarter in that gap, not deals, and not returns. Everything below assumes you did that first.

Decide what problem the program should solve

The original programs were built for a coverage problem. TechCrunch reported in June 2019 that Sequoia Capital had, ten years earlier, begun encouraging founders of its portfolio companies to back their founder friends, with Sequoia providing the money and sharing later rewards, which let the firm keep tabs on entrepreneurs and technologies not yet in its universe. Ben Casnocha of Village Global, writing in October 2019, described the same pressure from the other side: as funds grew to a billion dollars and more, general partners needed to write minimum $10 million checks for their time to count, while seed founders neither want nor need that much, so big firms used scouts to scan seed flow that feeds their Series A business.

Your fund is not in that position. Casnocha's second category is closer: independent, network-driven firms such as AngelList Spearhead and Village Global, where the network is the core strategy rather than lead generation for a later fund. That distinction decides everything downstream. If scouting is central to how you source, you owe scouts real capital, real feedback, and real economics. If it is a side experiment, say so out loud and keep it small.

Choose a program model

Decision rights are a design choice, not a feature every scout gets. Three models are visible in the sourced record.

Referral only. The scout brings you opportunities and you decide. The GoingVC explainer from August 2021, co-authored with a corporate partner at the law firm Maynard Cooper and Gale, describes the scout agreement as setting out duties, investment criteria, the protocol for pitching an investment to the firm, and how the scout gets paid. Treat that piece as a dated 2021 illustration of how such agreements were being written, not as a template.

Scout recommends, fund decides and writes the check. This is the referral model with capital attached and an explicit approval step.

Delegated check. The scout decides. Casnocha's 2019 description of scouts is people who invest money in startups on behalf of a venture fund, sometimes with full decision-making autonomy. Sequoia partner Bryan Schreier told TechCrunch in January 2018 that scout investments are led by scouts, that Sequoia does not take information rights or board seats on them, and that Sequoia is not on the cap table of those companies. That is a specific arrangement at one firm at one time, not a standard.

Pick one model and write it down. Scouts guess when you do not, and they guess in the direction that makes them look decisive to founders.

Recruit for access and judgment

You are buying proximity to founders plus a filter you trust. Look at where sourced programs actually found people.

Sequoia's early scouts were founders in its own portfolio, including Sam Altman, Brian Chesky, Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston, and Jason Calacanis, who scouted Uber; by 2019 Sequoia's Mike Vernal said the program was no longer limited to founders the firm had already backed. TechCrunch reported in January 2025, citing Sifted, that a16z had dozens of scouts across Europe, including operators at companies such as Poolside and 11x and Pippa Lamb, a partner at Sweet Capital.

A newsletter writer who joined a16z as a scout wrote in February 2025 that the role came out of a relationship with an a16z partner built up since 2020 while sharing promising startups with her, after covering more than 100 startups in the newsletter.

Contrary's Venture Partner post of August 2026 shows what a structured student program looks like: campus builders who are the go-to resource for founders at their school, a preference for applicants with more than one year of school left, three selection steps ending with a conversation with the firm's founder, and a school-year commitment. That post does not describe compensation, which is itself a reminder to publish your own terms.

Editorial guidance for selection: ask for the last ten founders they met and what they thought at the time, not for a resume. Prestige is a proxy for access, and a poor one. Ask about conflicts before you ask about deals: a current employer, an existing fund role, an accelerator affiliation, or their own angel checks.

Write the operating agreement

This section is editorial guidance, not legal instruction, and contracts, compensation, conflicts and investment authority all need advice from qualified counsel in your jurisdiction. Cash referral fees in particular are regulated differently by market and are not universally permissible.

Put these in writing before the first scout starts:

• Scope. Sectors, stages, geographies, and what is out of bounds. a16z scouts told Sifted, per TechCrunch in January 2025, that they were not allowed to invest directly in NFTs, which is a plain example of a written exclusion.
• Authority. Which of the three models applies, who signs, and what the scout may say about the firm. The 2021 GoingVC explainer makes the point that a scout should make clear the investment comes from the firm rather than from them personally, and avoid acting in a way that implies authority they do not have.
• Check size or referral rules, and where the money comes from.
• Attribution. Which scout gets credit for an introduction, how long that credit lasts, and what happens when two scouts bring the same company.
• Confidentiality and data handling. What a scout may share about companies they see, and what happens to their notes when the engagement ends.
• Conflicts and exclusivity. Schreier told TechCrunch in 2018 that Sequoia did not require scouts to work with it exclusively, though he guessed most did. Decide yours explicitly, including any right of first look and how long it runs.
• Follow-up duties. GoingVC notes the agreement may set a target number of opportunities and may require the scout to keep assisting after the firm invests. Say whether yours does.
• Termination. Notice on both sides, and what happens to unvested economics.

Design incentives without creating false certainty

Only two compensation facts in this evidence set come from named programs. Schreier said the carry in Sequoia's scout fund is shared among the scouts, so all of them benefit from the fund's returns. Allied Venture Partners states that its own scouts earn 20 percent carry on successful investments. Everything else you read as a market range is secondhand, so do not repeat it to your scouts as a norm and do not build your model on it.

What you owe a scout is clarity, not a number you cannot support. Write down the form of pay, the denominator it is measured against, the vesting or attribution rules, when it is calculated, and when it could actually pay out. Carry pays on exits, which means years, and a scout with a day job should hear that from you before they sign. If you offer cash, take advice on it first. Do not imply earnings, and do not describe a scout check as access to your fund's returns unless that is literally the instrument.

Scale is worth naming too. TechCrunch reported that a16z's European scouts write checks of $10,000 to $25,000 and do up to eight deals a year. Calacanis told TechCrunch he had put $600,000 into 20 startups across his years as a Sequoia scout. Those are individual programs, not benchmarks, and both come with dates.

Run a weekly reporting loop

This rhythm is editorial guidance, sized for a solo or small fund.

Separate acknowledgement from review. Acknowledge every referral the day it lands, even with one line confirming you have it. Then, once a week in under an hour, do the substantive pass: read new intros in one shared intake, mark each as qualified or not against your stated thesis, name the owner, and send every scout your actual read, including the passes, with one line on why. That second reply is the product you are selling to your network, and it is the part that fails first when the fund gets busy.

Once a month, send scouts what they cannot see: which of their companies advanced, what you funded and why, and where the gap you hired them for still looks empty. Keep a running note per scout with introductions sent, qualified rate, and last contact, so a fading relationship shows up as a number rather than as a surprise.

Review the program after one quarter

Also editorial guidance. Score the program, not the people, on seven things: useful introductions, thesis fit of what arrived, your own speed to first reply, follow-through from first meeting to decision, founder experience reported back to you, conflicts surfaced and resolved, and scout engagement over time. This evidence set gives you no outside benchmark for any of them, so compare each quarter against your own previous quarter and against the coverage gap you wrote down at the start.

Then make one of three calls: continue as is, change the model, or stop and say so cleanly. Ending a program well protects the relationships, which outlast the program.

Checklist and next step

Before you launch, you should have: the coverage gap in one sentence; the outcome you will measure; the authority model chosen; capital and economics set aside; a written agreement reviewed by counsel; a conflicts policy; an intake and a weekly reply commitment; a named owner at the fund; a first cohort small enough to service; and a review date one quarter out.

Browse current scout programs to see how programs are documented today. If you want the candidate-side view of the same market, read the VC scout programs guide, and the scout role guide for what the job involves day to day.

Sources: TechCrunch, "A peek inside Sequoia Capital's low-flying, wide-reaching scout program," June 7, 2019; TechCrunch, "Sequoia Capital just closed a giant new seed fund, and here's how it works," January 16, 2018; TechCrunch, "a16z has venture scouts scattered across Europe," January 30, 2025; Ben Casnocha, "Venture capital scout programs: FAQs," October 2019; GoingVC, "Rise of scout programs across venture capital," August 5, 2021; Allied Venture Partners, "How to become a venture capital scout"; Contrary, "Venture Partner applications 2026," August 23, 2026; Consumer Startups, "I am joining a16z as a venture scout," February 25, 2025. Program details are as of those dates and can change.