# Founder talent radar for operators leaving top startups

> Browse alumni departures from the startups that mint founders, then check what each person is building without ever chasing the same name twice.

- Workflow type: app
- Services: Harmonic, Google Sheets, Slack
- Categories: Operations, HR & People
- Published: 2026-08-24

## What it does

- Turns your watchlist of talent factory companies into a browsable radar, one tab per company, straight from a Google Sheet you already keep.
- Shows the senior people who have already left each company, and opens their full career history when you click a name.
- Checks any person on demand. A background agent hunts for a newly founded company matching their name or their stated next move and comes back with one of three answers: nothing announced yet, joined another company, or founded something.
- Writes every verdict and the date checked back to your sheet, so the status sits on the row and nobody re-checks the same person. One click shares the real finds into your sourcing channel.

## What you'll need

- A Harmonic account with API access. Harmonic is sales led, so if you do not have one yet you will need to request access first.
- A Google Sheet listing the companies you want to watch, one per row.
- A Slack workspace and the channel where your team shares sourcing finds.

## Prompt

I want an app that helps me catch operators the moment they leave a great company, before they show up in anyone else's deal flow. I keep a watchlist of talent factory companies, the scaled startups whose alumni tend to go on to found things, in a Google Sheet. The app should be a browsable radar over that list, so I am reading departures rather than waiting on notifications.

On load, read the watchlist tab of my Google Sheet with Get Values. Each row is one company, with the company name and its Harmonic company identifier or website domain. Render one tab per company across the top of the app, in sheet order, so adding or removing a row in the sheet changes the tabs.

Opening a company tab lists its people from Harmonic using Get Company Employees, filtered to past employees in senior roles. Show each person as a row with their name, their last title at that company, their team or function, and when their tenure ended. Get Company Employees supports role and status filtering, so use the status filter to isolate former employees. If that filter cannot isolate leavers, fall back to pulling the full roster and filtering client side on the tenure end date from Get Person. Let me sort by most recent departure and adjust the seniority bar.

Clicking a person opens their profile with the full history from Get Person: every company they have worked at, the role and dates at each, education, and their social links. If I only have a LinkedIn URL for someone, use Lookup Person to enrich them by that URL first. This is the surface I browse, so the profile should read like a career story and not a raw record dump.

Every person row has a "Check what they are building" button that kicks off a background agent for that one person. The agent enriches the person first with Get Person (or Lookup Person when it only has a LinkedIn URL), reads their latest role, headline and any stated next move, then searches Harmonic for a newly founded company that matches. It should use Search Companies (Natural Language) for the descriptive attempt, for example a stealth company founded in the last eighteen months by a former engineering lead at the watchlist company, and Search Companies (Typeahead) for name based attempts on the person's name, likely company names, and any domain in their profile. When a plausible match comes back, pull the full details with Get Company: name, description, website, founding date, stage, funding raised, headcount and location. The agent should confirm the founding date and the person's departure date line up before it calls something a match.

The agent finishes with exactly one of three verdicts: still unannounced, joined another company (naming the company and role), or founded something (with the company details it pulled). It writes that verdict, the date checked, the person, the company they left, their old role, and the new company details back to a checks tab in the same Google Sheet, using Append Values for a person who has never been checked and Update Values to overwrite the existing row on a re-check. Keep exactly one row per person.

The app reads that checks tab on load with Get Values, or Batch Get Values when it needs the watchlist and the checks together, and shows each person's status and date checked on their row. People with no row read as unchecked. That persistent state is the whole point, so make checked rows visually distinct and put re-checking behind an explicit secondary action rather than the main button. While an agent is running, show that row as in progress and refresh its status when the agent finishes.

When a check comes back as founded something, that row gets a "Share with the team" button that posts into our sourcing channel using Send a Message in Slack. The message should carry the person's name, the company they left and the role they held there, the new company with its description, website, stage and founding date, and the date we found it. Record in the checks tab that the person was shared, and show shared rows differently so we never post the same find twice.

Harmonic is limited to ten requests per second, so run person checks one at a time rather than fanning out across a whole roster, and queue them if I click several in a row. Cache each company roster for the session so switching tabs does not refetch it. The Google Sheet is the source of truth for check state, so always read it fresh when the app opens.

## How to customize

- Which companies sit on the watchlist. Add or remove a row in the sheet and the tabs in the app follow.
- How senior someone has to be before they appear, and how far back a departure still counts as fresh.
- Which Slack channel the shares land in, and what the message says about the person and their new company.

## FAQ

### Do I need my own Harmonic account?

Yes. Harmonic is a sales led product, so you will need an account with API access before the app can pull company rosters and people profiles. If you do not have one, request access from Harmonic first.

### Where does my watchlist live?

In your own Google Sheet, one company per row. The app reads that sheet every time it opens, so adding or removing a company is just editing a row. Nothing is hidden inside the app.

### What happens when someone has not announced anything yet?

The check records a plain "still unannounced" verdict along with the date it ran. That is useful on its own, because it tells you the person was looked at and roughly when, and you can always run the check again later.

### Will two people on my team end up checking the same person?

No. Every result is written back to your sheet and shown on the person's row, so checked people look different from unchecked ones and re-running a check takes a deliberate extra step.

### Can I control which people show up under each company?

Yes. The roster is filtered to people who have already left and who held senior roles, and you can raise or lower that seniority bar and sort by most recent departure.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/founder-talent-radar-for-operators-leaving-top-startups