Scout is a Brandbridge product built on one bet: there are more real, reachable, websiteless businesses in Zimbabwe than there are developers who know where to find them. We don't guess which ones — we go and check.
No API, no scraping, on purpose
Every business on this board was found door-to-door or by phone — not pulled from Google Places. That's slower, and it's deliberate: Google's terms don't let us store or resell place data, and honestly, a scraped list wouldn't be worth paying for. A curator has to actually stand in the shop, or get someone on the phone, before anything goes on the board.
What “hot” is actually measuring
A lead only earns a hotness score when it clears real signals: an active Facebook or Instagram presence with recent posts, a phone number a curator personally confirmed is live, and — where it matters — how close it sits to other hot leads, so one trip can cover several pitches. Nothing is rated hot from a spreadsheet guess. Leads also age out: anything unverified for 60–90 days gets flagged for a re-visit before it's trusted again.
Why it's a subscription, not a list you buy once
Curation is bounded human effort — Paul, Kupa, and one paid curator, not an infinite database. A subscription ties the price to what the team can actually keep verifying, on an ongoing basis, instead of selling a list that goes stale the day after you buy it.
What we won't do
No crowdsourced leads — inconsistent self-reporting would wreck the one thing we're selling: a consistent verification standard. No diagnosing a business's problems from a single visit; a curator notes what an owner mentioned in passing, and leaves the actual assessment to the developer who takes the lead. And no pretending a lead is fresh when it isn't — see the re-verification dates on every card.