Day 1: Commit velocity

The simplest acceleration signal — 14-day vs 90-day ratio.

Where this starts

Pick one startup before you read further. Any one. A founder you met, a company you almost-invested in, a portfolio org you want to monitor. Have its GitHub URL ready — every signal in the following six days runs against the same org you pick today.

Why this signal matters

Commit velocity tells you whether the engineering team is shipping more in the last 14 days than they have on average over the last 90. Sustained acceleration precedes hiring, which precedes a fundraise.

The 5-minute exercise

1Open the GitHub org you picked yesterday.
2Click the most-active repo.
3On the repo home, click Insights → Pulse → 1 month.
4Note: commits in the last week, commits in the last month.
5Now click 3 months. Note: commits in the last quarter.
6Compute: (weekly × 4) ÷ (monthly) and (monthly × 3) ÷ (quarterly).

What you’re filtering for

Both ratios above ~1.3 — the team is accelerating. Both above 1.5 — the acceleration is sharp enough to be worth a closer look.

Edge case

For orgs with 50+ repos, do this on the top 3 repos by recent activity, not just one. You're trying to read the org-level signal, not a single-repo blip.

Bonus

A bot or a hackathon spikes for a week and reverts. A team that has hired or found product-market fit accelerates and stays accelerated. Sustained > spike.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow: contributor diversity — why a single-bus-factor codebase tanks the round.

Curriculum: /challenge · Methodology: /methodology · Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6606558