Diligence the founder and the company before you write the check
Who the founders really are, how the money works, who controls the company, what is in court, and what breaks if the founder leaves: one report, every claim linked to its source, back in minutes. The founder never knows you looked.
Most check sizes never justify a diligence firm. This one does not need to be justified.
One report, see pricing, no subscription needed. See pricing.
The same work, elsewhere
What it costs
A diligence firm, comprehensive report on one executive
$1,500 to $5,000 per executive
a comprehensive executive due diligence report, one firm's published price range (advanced or global work runs $5,000 to $15,000 and up). Source: JRG Partners
A private investigator, by the hour
$132 an hour on average
a survey of 32 investigation firms in the 10 largest US metros, April 2026. Source: Zealous Advocate
A MentionFox Full Report on the company and the people who run it
See pricing for the whole report, back in minutes
Every claim citedEach finding links to the record it came from, so you can check it yourself.
Minutes, not weeksThe report is written while you wait, in minutes.
The subject is never involvedNo consent form, no call, no notice to the person or company you research.
Says what it could not findAn empty record is reported as empty, never filled in.
What you get: real sections of a real report
The Short Answer
The revenue trajectory is real and corroborated by independent parties. Fireworks AI's own Series D announcement dated July 15, 2026 claims over $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate; an independent research firm estimated $800 million as of May 2026, up from approximately $305 million at end of 2025. The growth is steep and corroborated, but no audited financial statement exists in any record searched.
Lin Qiao is the gravitational center of Fireworks AI in ways that go beyond a typical founder-CEO role. She was previously Head of PyTorch at Meta, and that technical credibility is woven into how the company positions itself externally: the team page leads with her name and prior role, and so do the Series C and Series D announcements.
MentionFox for investors sources bootstrapped founders before Crunchbase from public signals, vets any founder with a sourced and cited dossier, and runs dealflow, deal memos, warm-intro paths, and portfolio watch in a single workspace — for VCs, angels, scouts, and PE.
This Is Happening Right Now
The next company in your thesis is already leaving a trail. You just can't see it yet.
These are real types of public signals Foxhole reads — across code repos, hiring pages, maker communities, and emerging-category conversations. Each one is a founder you could reach before anyone else does.
Public repoTwo-founder team · commit cadence doubled over six weeks
"Non-profit publishing platform. Open-source flagship. Engineering output has roughly doubled in the last month and a half."
→ Engineering acceleration is the earliest fundraise tell — it shows in public repos three to six weeks before any wire. Foxhole surfaces the team and drafts a three-sentence opener that references the actual work.
Hiring signalsBootstrapped · profitable since year one
"Privacy-first analytics shop just posted a Controller plus a RevOps role plus an SOC2 lead — while still taking no outside money."
→ That hiring pattern is the signature of a company preparing to handle enterprise contracts on its own balance sheet. Ideal for a Series A check or a PE roll-up — and it's off everyone else's radar.
Maker communitySerial bootstrapped builder · fourth product, not first
"Image-and-video generation API, indie-built, quietly added customer-success and RevOps roles in the last 30 days."
→ Founder maker history predicts which lean teams actually scale. Foxhole ranks the signal, you pick the hook and the proof point, and send the opener from your own inbox.
Watch It Happen
Signal → Vet → Memo → Reach. Before the round is even announced.
This is a walkthrough of how a single public signal becomes a sourced founder dossier and a warm, cited opener — without a five-person research desk.
Interactive demo · Sample data · 30 seconds
Step 1 — Reading signals
Matching your thesis: "dev-tools · pre-seed · bootstrapped · US"...
Commit cadence doubled over six weeks. Two new infra hires this month. Founder shipped three prior products solo. The pattern that shows up before a round, not after.
SIGNAL CLASS
Engineering acceleration
STAGE READ
Pre-seed, pre-announcement
DOSSIER
Sourced & cited ready
Step 3 — Three-sentence opener drafted
Subject:Saw the infra work — not the landing page
Hi —
Your team roughly doubled commit cadence over the last six weeks and added two infra hires, which usually means you're about to handle a lot more load. I back bootstrapped dev-tools teams at exactly this inflection, before the round, not in the scrum after.
If you're open to it, I'd rather talk now than read about your raise on a newswire later.
✓ References real work✓ Names the inflection✓ Pre-round timing✓ You send it yourself
Signal to sourced opener, before the round was announced.
Read signals → surface the founder → vet with a cited dossier → draft the opener → save it to your pipeline. Nothing sends automatically — you review and send every message yourself.
Four steps. One workspace. No five-person research desk.
Step 1
Source
Foxhole reads four signal classes — engineering acceleration, operational scaling, founder maker history, and emerging-category pain — to surface bootstrapped companies before they appear in any private database.
Step 2
Vet
Founder Vetter builds a sourced, cited dossier: career and company arc, public reputation, network mapping beyond LinkedIn, and track-record signals. Every claim links back to where it came from.
Step 3
Decide
Spin a deal memo from a company you're evaluating — thesis, concerns, weighted conviction, and the asymmetric plays only you can run. The structured memo behind your next yes.
Step 4
Reach
Find a citable warm-intro path, draft the three-sentence opener, and track every founder in your pipeline. Nothing sends on its own — you review and send each message yourself.
Your investor workspace — Foxhole feed ranked by signal strength, founder dossiers, deal memos, warm-intro paths, and portfolio watch. Each card explains why it surfaced today.
Why Not Just Use Specter or Harmonic?
They hand you a hundred leads. We hand you three you can actually open.
Sourcing isn't the bottleneck anymore — conversion is. Cold investor outreach replies in the low single digits, and almost nobody personalizes at real scale. A bigger list doesn't fix that. A reason the founder replies does.
Specter
A signal database with hundreds of companies per query. You still export the list, decide who's worth a message, write each opener from a blank page, and chase contact details in another tool. Volume without a reason to reply.
Harmonic
Strong company graph and growth tracking. But it stops at the list — vetting the founder, writing the personalized opener, and running the deal memo all happen somewhere else, across two or three more subscriptions.
MentionFox
Surfaces three companies that match your thesis today → vets the founder with a sourced, cited dossier → drafts the three-sentence opener that references their real work → tracks it in your pipeline and memo. One login. See pricing.
Everything In One Place
Sourcing, diligence, and pipeline — built for the way investors actually work.
Each capability links to the real surface. Sign up free to open any of them.
Sourcing — find founders before the crowd
Foxhole
Proprietary deal flow. Subscribe to your thesis and get a daily feed of bootstrapped companies entering enterprise scale before they hit Crunchbase — ranked by signal strength, each with the reason it surfaced today.
Watch the alumni of any company — Stripe, Anthropic, Figma, OpenAI, or whoever you add. See when one of them starts something new, with one-click links to vet the founder. Three watchlists free.
Founders the moment they show "someone just started something" — stealth departures, big-company exits, co-founder hunts, just-launched products. Pattern-scored, with one-click add to pipeline or research.
Diligence — know the founder before the partner meeting
📂
Founder Vetter dossier
A verified, sourced portrait of any founder: career and company arc, exits, board seats, public reputation and sentiment, and track-record signals. Not a Google search — a partner-meeting-grade dossier where every claim is cited.
Co-founders, frequent collaborators, prior investors, and advisors — relationship signals beyond what's on LinkedIn. See who really backs a founder and who the warm path runs through.
Two co-founders? Three finalists for a board seat? Compare people side by side across expertise, leadership, communication style, and risk — with role-aware scoring. Make the call without another round of calls.
Pipeline & CRM — run the whole deal in one workspace
🗂️
Dealflow pipeline
Every founder you're tracking, from sourced to closed, in one board. Add companies straight from Foxhole or Founder Radar, with the thesis-match context attached so you know why each one is there.
For any founder or investor, find a citable warm-intro path — scored by connection strength, with the co-investment or shared history that justifies the ask. Copy the subject and message and send it yourself.
The structured memo behind every yes. Auto-built context from your sourcing and signal data, weighted conviction, a deterministic action band, and a Linchpins panel of asymmetric plays only you can run.
Rank a verified investor base against each company in your pipeline — fit score 0 to 100, green for a strong fit, with a warm-intro path on every match. Useful for co-investment and for founders raising alongside you.
Track the companies you've backed — positions, entry size, and per-holding signals pulled from your scan data. One consolidated view so you know when to double down, with a one-page printable tear sheet for your LPs.
Your daily home page as an investor — what needs attention today, fresh signals, and every tool in one place. Open it each morning instead of stitching together five tabs.
The next company in your thesis is leaving a trail right now
Start your free trial. Subscribe to a thesis. See what Foxhole surfaces — and run a founder dossier on someone you're already evaluating. First dossier in five minutes.
