Scout Programs in Venture Capital
Scout programs are structured ways for large venture capital funds to extend their sourcing surface area.
Scout programs are structured ways for large venture funds to extend their sourcing surface area beyond the core partnership by empowering trusted outsiders, often founders, operators, and experienced angels, to identify and sometimes directly invest in very early-stage startups. Their core value proposition is speed and network reach: scouts can access pre-seed and seed founders earlier than institutional investors typically can, while the fund gets a low-cost option on future ownership and relationship-building.
In practice, scout programs blend three incentives: delegated capital (often $100k to $200k per scout/angel cohort-year), economics tied to outcomes (carry participation rather than salary), and privileged access to the fund’s platform (partners, diligence patterns, community, and follow-on opportunity). Atomico’s Angel Programme formalizes this with $100,000 allocated per angel, upside participation plus a shared “Angel Pool,” and full autonomy within guardrails that reflect LP commitments.
The operational complexity sits less in sourcing and more in governance. Funds must manage allocation rules, conflicts of interest, marketing or solicitation restrictions, and the legal boundary between “referrals” and regulated brokerage activity. In the US, compensation structures and solicitation practices increasingly intersect with the SEC’s marketing rule framework and broker-finder constraints; in Europe, AIFM conflict management and disclosure expectations shape how programs are documented and monitored.
Definition and purpose
A venture scout is typically an external individual empowered to help a fund discover startups early, either by passing qualified leads, or by making small investments on the fund’s behalf. Village Global’s framing is blunt: scouts are people “empowered to invest money in startups” on behalf of a fund, sometimes with meaningful autonomy.
Why large funds use scouts is seen clearly in European programs. Sequoia Capital’s Europe scout program, according to Sifted, gives mostly founders and executives capital to invest in early-stage companies; it runs in cohorts and is explicitly designed as an “individual investor network.” Accel describes a similar logic: its “Starters” are elite operators with discretionary capital, allowing Accel to be in the earliest rounds and build a pipeline for later institutional follow-on.
A secondary purpose is market coverage and diversification of the deal funnel. Sifted’s survey of European scout and angel schemes emphasizes pipeline diversification, earlier access for later-stage funds, and a mechanism for newer investors to build track records.
Scout profiles, incentives, and operating models
The dominant scout profile is “high-network proximity to founders”: repeat founders, senior operators at fast-scaling startups, domain experts, community builders, and active angels. Sequoia’s European scouts are described as “mostly founders and executives,” while Accel’s cohort includes prominent operators and founders across Europe.
Sequoia’s European participants receive $100k per year to deploy from a dedicated sub-fund, with cohort lengths commonly one to two years. Accel’s European “Starters” receive $200k each, with substantial flexibility on pace and frequency. Atomico allocates $100,000 per new angel and explicitly grants autonomy within ethical and LP-aligned constraints.
Accel provides “economic benefits” via carry participation, plus an added benefit when Accel later leads a round in a scout-backed company. Atomico structures shared upside and a pooled carry mechanism to promote collaboration and reduce “single-deal” competition.
Lightspeed’s “Emergence” framing, positioned as an evolution of its scout program, highlights non-monetary value: content, community, connections, and LP-facing opportunities, alongside capital support for underwriting.
Operational models vary, but four patterns recur across large funds and regions: Formal invite-only scout networks (capital + carry). Sequoia and Accel exemplify structured cohorts with clear budgets and fund-supplied capital.
Atomico’s program is functionally a scout network with training, community mechanics, pooled carry, and a deliberate stage separation from Atomico’s Series A core strategy.
Andreessen Horowitz has “dozens of scouts across Europe,” writing $10k to $25k checks and doing up to eight deals per year, according to TechCrunch’s summary of Sifted reporting.
Greylock combines a scout program with other earliest-stage initiatives; its scout cohorts total 35 scouts across three cohorts investing in 100+ startups, and it positions scouts as a way to expand reach and add domain expertise.
For funds, the highest-performing programs tend to behave like “small funds inside the fund” rather than informal referral schemes: explicit thesis boundaries, fast internal decision lanes, and clear signaling rules about follow-on to avoid founder confusion. Sifted highlights the signaling risk and mixed scout and founder outcomes as a recurring critique, making expectation-setting core. Strong governance usually includes written allocation principles, conflict disclosures, and documented oversight of compensated promoters or referrers.