How Tiago picks.
Every weekday the day's funding rounds, YC launches and a16z speedrun companies come in as candidates. Tiago reads each one and keeps the companies worth a look. The rest never reach the site.
- Candidates read
- 4,321
- Picked
- 530
- Passed over
- 3,791
- Since
- June 2026
Where they come from.
Four sources, each read the same way. A round is how a company gets noticed; the company is what gets picked.
- Funding rounds
- Rounds announced across the market each day, with the amount, the stage and the investors named on them.
- Y Combinator
- Companies launching out of each YC batch, as they launch.
- a16z speedrun
- The companies of each speedrun cohort, five a weekday, oldest cohort first.
- Tiago's own finds
- Companies and products Tiago comes across and bookmarks himself.
What makes the cut.
Investors do the first filter: before anyone backs a company, someone checks the founders, the technology and the market. Tiago does the second.
- Something new
- It makes something that did not exist before, or does an old job in a new way.
- Worth five minutes
- Of what is left, Tiago keeps the companies he would want to hear about himself.
What a pick gets.
A company that makes the cut is written up once, and that write-up is what every page and the email show.
- One line
- Its name and what it makes, written for the purpose: “Peppermint — Billing and collections for clinical trial sites”.
- Its round
- The amount and the stage, or its batch, and the investors named on it.
- A page of its own
- With its batch, the issue it went out in and its investors' other rounds on the site.
- A place in the email
- The next weekday's issue, biggest rounds first.