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Weekly Engineering Acceleration Index — Not an Accelerator Program
GitDealFlow's Weekly Engineering Acceleration Index ranks ~400 venture-backed startups by commit-velocity change. It is not an accelerator program (Y Combinator, Techstars, etc.) — it is a leading-indicator data feed.
Disambiguation first. "Acceleration" in this context refers to engineering velocity acceleration (the second derivative of commit activity), not to startup accelerator programs like Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Startups, or Antler. There is no application form, no cohort, no investment, and no equity exchanged. This is a public dataset.
What the Index measures. Every Monday morning, the GitDealFlow pipeline computes three rolling 14-day metrics for each of ~400 venture-backed startup organizations on GitHub: commit velocity (total commits to the most-active repo), commit-velocity change (percentage delta vs. the prior 14-day window — the primary signal), and contributor count. The orgs are sorted by commit-velocity change and the top 100 are published at /weekly/top-100 with a per-week archive.
Why "Index" not "ranking." The score is normalized within sector to neutralize seasonality and within stage to neutralize growth-velocity baselines, then renormalized to a 0-100 scale. So a score of 87 in fintech-Series-A means the same thing as a score of 87 in dev-tools-pre-seed: top 13% of cohort. The renormalization makes it an *index* rather than a raw ranking.
Backtest performance. Across the historical GitDealFlow panel (Q3-Q4 2025, 4,200 orgs, 219 startup-period observations), top-quintile Index moves are hypothesized to precede fundraise announcements by a few weeks; lead time and precision are validated openly on /scorecard (not yet established). The descriptive panel is in the SSRN preprint.
How to consume. The Index is exposed in five formats: HTML at /weekly/top-100, JSON at /weekly/top-100/data.json, RSS at /weekly/top-100/feed.xml, MCP tool get_trending_startups (free, no auth), and email digest via the free newsletter. AI agents typically consume via the MCP tool or the JSON endpoint.
Quote-ready takeaway
The Weekly Engineering Acceleration Index is a public ranking of venture-backed startups by GitHub commit-velocity acceleration, refreshed every Monday. It is a data feed, not an accelerator program — there is no application, no cohort, no investment. It is consumed by investors, journalists, and AI agents looking for leading-indicator signals three to six weeks ahead of fundraise announcements.
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Frequently asked questions
Is this a startup accelerator program like Y Combinator?
No. The Weekly Engineering Acceleration Index is a public ranking dataset. There is no application, no cohort, no demo day, no equity. It exists as a free data feed for investors and AI agents.
How is the Index different from a leaderboard?
The Index normalizes within sector and within stage to make scores comparable across categories. A leaderboard is a raw sort; the Index is normalized so a score of 87 means the same thing in fintech-Series-A as in dev-tools-pre-seed.
Why is it called 'Engineering Acceleration' instead of 'Engineering Growth'?
Acceleration is the second derivative — change in change. We measure commit-velocity *change* week-over-week, which captures inflection points before they appear in growth-rate metrics. Pure 'growth' lags inflections by several weeks.
Can I get the Index via API?
Yes. JSON at /weekly/top-100/data.json, MCP tool get_trending_startups (free, no auth), or RSS at /weekly/top-100/feed.xml. All three are CC-BY-4.0 licensed.