VC Pitch Meeting Surveillance

A secretive deal flow hack where photographers are stationed outside major VC firms to identify startups that are fundraising. This creates competitive intelligence for other VCs.

How It Works

• Photographers stationed outside major VC offices (like Sequoia, Andreessen)
• Offer to take photos of founders in front of the VC firm's logo/building
• Collect company/founder information when sharing photos
• Sell this intelligence to other VC firms
• Creates visibility into deals other VCs might be missing

Similar Digital Surveillance

• Twitter account @stealthcospy (750 followers) that monitors:
  • When people change profiles from "stealth mode" to announcing projects
  • When people leave high-growth startups
  • Changes in LinkedIn profiles indicating new ventures
  • Example alerts:
    • Ex-GitHub data science director working on something new
    • Founders announcing SDK tooling for enterprise LLM applications

Why It Works

• VCs want to know about deals they're not hearing about
• Traditional deal flow methods (dinners, conferences, podcasts) don't capture everything
• Creates competitive advantage through information asymmetry
• Helps VCs reach out early to promising startups
• Provides intelligence on competitor VC firm activities

Industry Response

• Most VCs acknowledge awareness but claim not to pay for such services
• Demonstrates the lengths VCs will go for deal flow advantage
• Similar to how hedge funds use proximity/speed advantages for trading
• Shows evolution of competitive intelligence in venture capital