Trace

USER: t PASS: Trace

Use this when loading up Render to try it out

Inspiration

A pre-seed fund like Everywhere Ventures holds 265+ companies with a handful of partners. At pre-seed most founders don't send updates, and every portfolio tool depends on founder-reported data. So partners usually learn a company is in trouble when it asks for a bridge, and learn about exits after the fact.

What it does

Trace tells a fund with more companies than people which ones need a partner this week, and why, without asking founders for anything.

Census: a monthly status for every company (active, fading, quiet, no public activity, unresolved), each linked to its evidence.
This month: raises, exits, renames and headcount movers.
Call list: who to call this week and what to ask, plus a CSV for the fund's CRM.
Check-ins: when the census gives a reason, the fund's agent asks the founder directly. The startup's agent answers from its own data room, citing a file for every claim, and the founder approves each answer before it's sent.

On Everywhere's real portfolio, Trace found 7 raises worth about $145M in the last 30 days, exits nobody had reported (M7 Health acquired by Ascend Learning; Aerodome now redirecting to its acquirer, Flock Safety), and total portfolio headcount: 9,958 people, up 17% in a year.

How we built it

Census: Python, SQLite, async ingesters. Free public checks: each website and its Web Archive history, email (MX) and domain registration, GitHub, public job boards, SEC Form D and funding news. Licensed headcount and news from Akta, sourced from LinkedIn and never scraped.
Check-ins: TypeScript agents (Claude), with every model call traced in PRISM.
One Node server hosts the front page, the census and check-ins; deployed on Render.

Challenges we ran into

Matching companies to the right records. Namesakes (Otis the vet startup vs Otis Elevator), renames (Mr Yum to me&u) and investment vehicles in SEC filings. Every match needs a second piece of evidence before it counts.
The Web Archive indexes recent months late. That lag looked like decline, so we correct for it against the whole portfolio and only flag drops that are unlikely by chance.
Form D covers only 19% of companies. So it's a badge, and funding news counts too.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Trace grades itself. Against licensed headcount on 165 companies, free data was right 80% of the time where it gave a clear status. The companies it called quiet were a coin flip, so Trace leans on licensed data there.
It found exits and raises on its own, from public records only.
Licensed data for the whole portfolio cost $17, about 7 cents a company.

What we learned

Website activity is a weak proxy for company health; headcount is a much better one. Our own sample showed it: Spade looked quiet but doubled its team.
For a tool partners act on, saying "we can't confirm this" beats guessing.

What's next for Trace

Run monthly with three design-partner funds and measure how many calls lead to action.
Backtest "fading" against what happened next: bridges, shutdowns, acquisitions.
A monthly email and CRM sync.
A cross-fund view for LPs and secondary buyers, who can't get founder updates at all.