Investment process
How to read a pitch deck in twelve minutes
A repeatable reading order for pitch decks: which four slides decide the meeting, what each one has to prove, and the questions that expose a weak deck fast.
25 August 2026 · 7 min read
Blog
How defensible investment decisions get made
Method notes from building an analysis platform for brokers, funds and founders: memo structure, bottom-up market sizing, risk scoring and the warning signs that show up long before a diligence call.
Latest
How to read a pitch deck in twelve minutes
Decks are written to be read front to back. Read in that order and you absorb the narrative before the numbers. Reverse the order and the narrative has to survive the numbers instead.
Investment process · 25 August 2026 · 7 min read
Articles by category
More from the research desk
Each piece is a working method, written the way we apply it inside the platform.
Investment process
2 articlesInvestment process
The investment memo, section by section
A section-by-section investment memo template used by investment committees, with what belongs in each part, what to cut, and how to keep every claim traceable to evidence.
18 August 2026 · 9 min read
Due diligence
4 articlesDue diligence
Assessing founder-market fit without guessing
Founder-market fit is usually assessed on vibes. Here is an evidence-based version: what to ask, what to verify, and which signals genuinely predict execution.
25 August 2026 · 7 min read
Due diligence
What questions do investors ask in due diligence?
The questions that actually get asked across commercial, financial, technical, legal and team diligence — and what a good answer looks like for each.
25 August 2026 · 8 min read
Due diligence
What is a startup data room, and what goes in it?
A folder-by-folder data room checklist for a seed or Series A raise, what to include before diligence starts, and the omissions that slow deals down most.
25 August 2026 · 6 min read
Due diligence
A due diligence checklist that survives contact with a real deal
A practical startup due diligence checklist covering commercial, financial, legal, technical and team workstreams, with the evidence that closes each item.
24 August 2026 · 10 min read
Market analysis
3 articlesMarket analysis
Which moats actually hold at seed stage
Most claimed moats are not moats at seed stage. A ranking of defensibility types by how quickly a funded competitor can neutralise them, with what to verify for each.
25 August 2026 · 8 min read
Market analysis
How do you calculate SOM?
A step-by-step method for calculating serviceable obtainable market from channel capacity and conversion rates, rather than by taking a percentage of TAM.
25 August 2026 · 6 min read
Market analysis
How to calculate TAM, SAM and SOM without inventing numbers
A practical bottom-up method for calculating TAM, SAM and SOM from unit counts and pricing, with the sanity checks investors apply and the shortcuts that get a deck rejected.
11 August 2026 · 8 min read
Financial analysis
4 articlesFinancial analysis
Burn rate and runway, calculated honestly
Gross versus net burn, why the runway number in most decks is optimistic, and the three adjustments that make it defensible before an investment committee.
25 August 2026 · 7 min read
Financial analysis
What is a good CAC payback period?
How to calculate CAC payback correctly on a gross-margin basis, what payback periods hold up at seed, Series A and beyond, and the accounting choices that quietly flatter the number.
25 August 2026 · 7 min read
Financial analysis
How much runway should a startup have?
Why eighteen to twenty-four months is the working standard, what runway to hold when raising, and the trigger points at which financing risk becomes the dominant risk in the business.
25 August 2026 · 6 min read
Financial analysis
Unit economics: reading CAC, LTV and payback honestly
How to calculate CAC, LTV and CAC payback period without flattering the numbers, which definitional choices distort them, and what benchmarks actually mean at each stage.
24 August 2026 · 8 min read
Valuation
2 articlesValuation
How much equity should you give away in a seed round?
Typical seed dilution ranges, how the option pool shuffles dilution onto founders, and how to work backwards from the capital you actually need rather than from a target valuation.
25 August 2026 · 7 min read
Valuation
Valuing a company with no revenue
The methods used to value pre-revenue startups — scorecard, comparables, dilution-first and venture method — and how to document a valuation so it can be defended later.
24 August 2026 · 8 min read
Risk
2 articlesRisk
Twelve red flags that show up before the diligence call
Twelve red flags visible in a pitch deck and data room before the first diligence call, why each one matters, and the question that resolves it either way.
4 August 2026 · 7 min read
Risk
A risk framework that produces decisions, not adjectives
A six-category, 5x5 startup risk assessment framework: how to score likelihood and impact, when to mitigate versus accept, and how risk scoring feeds an investment verdict.
28 July 2026 · 8 min read
AI and process
1 articleAI and process
Where AI helps investment research, and where it quietly hurts
A grounded view of AI in investment research: which tasks it genuinely accelerates, which it degrades, and the controls that keep model output auditable.
24 August 2026 · 7 min read
Guides
Prefer a structured reading order?
Each guide collects the articles on one topic in the sequence the work happens, plus the free tools and templates that do the same job.
Investment due diligence
A complete guide to investment due diligence: the workstreams, the questions investors ask, the red flags that matter, the data room, and how findings become a defensible memo.
9 articles
Market sizing
How to build market size from the bottom up: what belongs in TAM, SAM and SOM, how to calculate serviceable obtainable market from channel capacity, and how sizing interacts with defensibility.
3 articles
Startup financials
A guide to the financial questions that decide early-stage outcomes: CAC, LTV and payback, burn rate and runway, how much runway to hold, and how pre-revenue companies get valued.
6 articles
Apply these methods to a live deal
The platform runs the same structure automatically: bottom-up market sizing, a scored risk register, red-flag checks and a memo with every claim traced to its evidence. Every workspace starts with 2 free analyses and the full toolset.